


just another night (is all that it takes)

by mletart



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: (kinda sorta?), Alternate Universe - Mob, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, I don't think it's worse than in the novels really, Multi, me: -cares more about writing ridiculous safe house bonding for Ronan and Adam-, me: -elaborate shrugging-, me: -starts off attempting to write a cool mafioso type AU-, warnings for violence and minor character death and mentions of child abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-08 16:32:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18627010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mletart/pseuds/mletart
Summary: For The Raven Cycle 2019 Big Bang.In a world where supernatural creatures are known but aren't commonplace, Ronan Lynch is part of a supernatural hunting family. He attracts the wrong sort of attention from demon Piper Laumonier after killing her vampire beau Colin Greenmantle to avenge his father.The Lynch family's most loyal hit-man Mr. Gray tasks Adam Parrish, taken in by Mr. Gray after his own sordid past, with helping to guard Ronan while Piper seeks revenge.Richard Campbell Gansey III is a police officer in charge of Special Investigations dealing with supernatural cases, and Blue Sargent is the part-time civilian consultant he hires for her supernatural know-how.There's danger in their future, but mainly, there's stumbling through friendship and more-than-friendship.





	just another night (is all that it takes)

**Author's Note:**

> My original inspiration for this idea was this [art](https://tmblr.co/ZCqoSw2Um3dD8) (https://tmblr.co/ZCqoSw2Um3dD8) by [xla-hainex](https://xla-hainex.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Please check it out it's gorgeous. the first time I saw it I texted one of my friends (who hasn’t actually read the Raven Cycle, which may be part of the problem) and was like “1) he looks aMAZING 2) he looks like he could be the leader of the Irish mob who may or may not take out hits on demons in his spare time!” and my friend was basically like “lol sounds dumb.” so as a vague result of that I've written over 25k words largely motivated by spite ah ha ha~  
>  
> 
> I'm sorry this is late for the Big Bang, but life happens. The good news is: everybody, I HAVE A NIECE NOW !  
>  
> 
> also I recognize that I'm ridiculous with the title but I've wanted to use that song as a title inspiration for fOREVER and I literally couldn't resist anymore sooooo  
>    
>  
> 
> I wanna thank [not-used-to-being-normal](https://not-used-to-being-normal.tumblr.com/) for helping talk this out with me in the very beginning and giving me some excellent ideas!
> 
> I wanna thank Corvus for their support as beta!
> 
> And I wanna thank [nihilinterduo](https://dallasmangolin.tumblr.com/) for illustrating one of my very favorite scenes to write!
> 
> You can find it [here](https://orokszem.tumblr.com/post/184509917102/my-piece-for-ravencyclebigbang-its-to) (https://orokszem.tumblr.com/post/184509917102/my-piece-for-ravencyclebigbang-its-to)
> 
>  
> 
> I hope you like it!

“How well do you remember the Lynch brothers?”

In Adam's experience, Mr. Gray was hardly one for small talk. Especially during physical training exercises. Adam wasn't sure where this was going, but he couldn’t help but feel faintly suspicious of the way Mr. Gray waited until a particularly tricky hand-to-hand maneuver to ask the question.

“They were pretty rowdy kids,” Adam answered as he moved to block, mirroring the same deliberately casual tone Mr. Gray had used. He knew that Mr. Gray worked for the Lynch family, but Mr. Gray had never involved Adam in that. “It was a while ago.”

“You remember which one was the rowdiest?” This question was accompanied by a jab in the direction of Adam's kidney that would have been pretty debilitating if Mr. Gray had been facing someone he really wanted the blow to land against.

Adam caught Mr. Gray's arm and used Mr. Gray's momentum to leverage him to the side. “Ronan.” It was an easy answer, Adam wasn't going to pretend to stumble over it.

Mr. Gray nodded, giving nothing away. “He’s stirred up some trouble.”

“How much trouble?”

Mr. Gray let out a quiet sigh and dropped his hands to his sides. Adam did the same. Mr. Gray said, “Colin Greenmantle is dead.”

“Shit.”

“Shit.” Mr. Gray echoed in agreement.

“What happens now?” Adam asked carefully, because it was more polite than the variations of _what do you expect me to do about it_ that actually came to mind.

“I’m going to do what I can to run some damage control. If I can count on you for some assistance, I’ll be a hell of a lot more effective at it.”

It was a skill, that way Mr. Gray had of communicating what ought to be overtly manipulative statements but stating them in such a way that was so void of demand or personal investment that you barely noticed you were being steered in the direction he wanted you to go. Adam did notice, but ultimately it didn’t matter either way, because he wasn’t going to refuse Mr. Gray without good reason. He nodded once in affirmation.

Mr. Gray nodded back in quiet gratitude. “You’ll know more when I’m ready to act.”

Mr. Gray strode out of the training room, and Adam watched him go with no small amount of foreboding.

What a mess.

 

* * *

 

“I don't know why she's always hanging around here. Does he really think she's gonna solve his cases for him with her psychic intuition?” Gansey heard Burton muttering upon entering the precinct.

“Her name is Blue,” Gansey said in as blandly pleasant a tone as possible. “And if you asked her I'm sure she'd be happy to tell you she isn't psychic. She's been invaluable on so many cases because she's researched supernatural creatures extensively. Her family is also well versed in the supernatural, which is part of the reason her interest in supernatural creatures began so young, and why she's so informed in facts rather than depending on popular misconceptions. Do you have your report for me on the Neuhmann case?”

Burton mumbled something about how he'd have it on Gansey's desk soon, which Gansey wasn't really listening to anyway.

When Gansey opened his office door, Blue was sitting in his chair with her clunky boots up on his desk, gently tossing his iron fish-shaped paperweight up into the air and catching it again.

“Jane!” Gansey greeted, genuinely pleased, pulling one of the spare chairs over to the side of the desk to sit catty-corner from her.

Blue kept her eyes on the fish’s progress through the air. “You don't have audio recordings for the hallways around here do you? I'd very much like to have hard evidence that you do in fact know what my name is.” But when her eyes did flit over to him, in between catching and launching the fish skywards again, Gansey didn't think he was mistaken in thinking that Blue was at least a little bit pleased too.

“I got your message. I figured it'd be easier to go over case details in person,” Blue said, finally returning the paperweight to the desk.

Gansey nodded his head. “It's good to have you here, Jane. What can you tell me about the fae folk? Specifically, how far their abilities to alter time and space extend, and common ways they might go about seeking retribution for perceived wrongs.”

Blue only looked at him.

It was possible Gansey leaned on Blue a little more than he needed to for some of the cases. At least, that may be true of more recent developments. One of his very favorite parts of his job had become the time he got to spend learning from Blue.

They’d sat together not so differently from how they were sitting together now, even in those early days, as Blue talked him through what she knew. Exorcisms, signs of a shapeshifter, weaknesses of jinn. Gansey had found that he’d had so much to learn, and he enjoyed Blue’s company so much, that he’d learned a truly considerable amount all rather quickly. Maybe too quickly. He hated the feeling that he was actively running out of excuses to call Blue in.

It was possible Blue found him too obvious. He couldn't fault her that. But he really could use her knowledge on the case at hand.

“You want me to tell you about the fae?” Blue asked after another moment or two had gone by, voice wry. “Are you trying to be cute?”

Gansey wasn't sure how he was supposed to answer that.

“You know I'm descended from the fae, right?”

“No.” Gansey was fairly confident he would have remembered if she'd mentioned that before.

“Really?” Blue shrugged a little. “I didn't mean to not tell you earlier. I'm just used to people knowing, I guess.”

“You're descended from the fae,” Gansey encouraged; he couldn't deny his interest was piqued.

“Distantly. Practically everyone at my house is.” Blue adjusted her ponytail so it looked more messy as opposed to less. “It's really not as wild as it sounds. Well. One of my mom's best friends, Persephone, she's pretty out there. But she's the only one who ever spent time with the actual fae.”

“What was that like?”

“It's really hard to get any kind of direct answers out of Persephone. The vague impression I got was that she was the consort of one of the fae in the Queen's guard. But then he died or went away or possibly just moved on, I dunno, I wasn't gonna press for specifics. But the Queen liked Persephone enough to let Persephone go without a fuss, which is rare. Persephone still meets with her, every so often.”

“The Fae Queen?”

“Yup.”

“Isn't that dangerous?”

“Persephone never seems too concerned.” Blue shrugged expansively. “Who knows, it may be more dangerous to ignore the Queen and leave her feeling spurned. The fae folk have their reputation for disproportionate retribution because of their Queen. She’s kept her crown because she's the strongest and most volatile of them all. You remember all the times we’ve talked about the biggest bads in the supernatural realm?”

Gansey nodded. “The three Laumoniers are the oldest demons we have any account of. They’re thought of as the original demons. Their offspring who likes to go by the name Piper is a similarly ancient demon. So far as we can tell, she used her demonic influence to turn a mortal man who’d caught her interest, Colin Greenmantle, into the first vampire.”

“Right. They’re all scared of the Fae Queen. The fae are one of the most powerful supernatural forces that exist. They’re only less feared by the masses than demons because they're very territorial and they only concern themselves with their own small, specific domains. They prefer seclusion, they don't want much to do with the outside world, but if they feel they've been insulted or if they feel like an outsider is encroaching on their lands, their power is terrifying to the most intimidating supernatural creatures on record. The best way of staying safe is to not attract their attention at all.”

“Even for those of you who are part fae yourselves?” Gansey asked.

“Especially for those of us who are part fae. We know better than most what the fae are capable of if you ever make the mistake of crossing them. You know how I can enhance a person's magic?”

This Gansey did know.

“That's a rare ability, even among those who are born with magic. And it's not just that. If I really focus I can cut off a person's magic. I have some sway over supernatural beings as well. It's more of a challenge, but if they're close I can sense if they're using supernatural abilities and I can make it easier or harder for them. My family thinks that’s part of the fae blood coming through in me. It's how I know there's more to you than you admit to.”

This side of Blue’s abilities, Gansey hadn't been aware of. He fought back the nearly overwhelming impulse to swallow down the nerves that her words caused, striving not to seem too overtly guilty. “What do you mean?”

“I can sense you have a magical potential to compel people. To make them want to listen to you. That's what you were born with, but I've never seen you use it except for a few rare cases and even then, you kept it fairly moderate. But I can tell that you have more potential than what you were born with. There's more, somewhere under the surface. I'm guessing it's gotta be buried pretty deep. Pent up, right beyond what I'm able to sense.”

“Perhaps you give me too much credit.” It sounded weak, even to Gansey’s own ears.

“I doubt that,” Blue said coolly.

Blue was so bright. Gansey felt a little sick as he wondered if Blue had been able to notice any differences come over him and if she'd been sensing those differences long enough to realize they matched eerily well with the lunar cycle. He wondered if she noticed how he always made sure to have iron and salt and so many other protections against the supernatural, but not silver. There were so many possible small, damning signs that wouldn’t even occur to him that she might pick up on.

But Blue only said, “I can't make you tell me. But it isn't going to stay secret forever.” Then she said, “So what poor bastard got on the fae folk's bad side?”

And Gansey gratefully reached for his folder on the latest case.

He knew that what she said was true. Things couldn't keep going on this way forever.

But for now, they put their heads together to look over the information they had, falling seamlessly into the teamwork they'd developed over months of shared cases.

Gansey resolved to enjoy it as long as he could.

 

* * *

 

Adam had known that he wouldn’t like Mr. Gray’s plan, and Adam wasn’t wrong.

He couldn’t deny that Mr. Gray’s plan was a logical one, and 99 times out of 100 sheer logic was enough to win Adam over. This wasn’t one of those times.

The Veranda was the Lynch’s restaurant of choice and their quasi base of operations. It was where they held deals with their allies and negotiations with their enemies. It was also, in some sort of stroke of cosmically scaled irony, where Adam had happened to work as a busboy for one of his first childhood jobs. For him, the restaurant had seemed like a fairly average place to work, even if he had been somewhat suspicious of what went on when Niall and Aurora Lynch and their guests left the traditional dining area and went behind closed steel doors that Adam had never entered. Adam preferred to leave all that in the past. Of course he wasn’t so lucky.

Mr. Gray had gathered intel that warned that Piper was planning to strike the Veranda during the fuss of New Year’s Eve. Mr. Gray wanted someone who wouldn’t attract any attention on the inside while he responded to the threat. Seeing how easily Adam had been able to walk into the restaurant with a handful of comments about how he used to work there and if they were looking for any extra help for the holiday, thereby securing his position, it was more than obvious that Adam was the best fit for the job.

Just because Adam saw the sense in it didn’t mean Adam wanted to do it. He was surprised by how strong his memories of the Veranda were, how clear and pressing, even after all of these years. The Lynches had grabbed his attention most strongly of all. Of course they did. They represented all at once everything Adam hated and everything Adam had wanted to be.

Niall Lynch had been trouble. No one had needed to tell Adam that, even at the age of 11, although many people had.

Those people had still mostly liked Niall Lynch, because Niall Lynch had been likeable, but it’d always been obvious that he was a man to be wary of, just from the brazen way he held himself or the rough edge to his booming laugh.

Niall Lynch had been good at manufacturing camaraderie. He had a way of making you feel like he'd taken a liking to you. It was strangely effective even though Adam, young though he might have been, had _known_ that this was how Niall Lynch acted with anyone, regardless of if he had any idea who they were or not.

He’d taken the time to learn Adam's name and then would call him over by thundering, “Adam, first man!” He’d say vague complimentary things like “you look like you’ve got a good head on your shoulders” that pleased Adam despite himself, even as he actively thought to himself how Niall Lynch had no real evidence to back up such claims. Once Niall Lynch had asked him a question, and Adam had ended his answer with a polite “sir,” and Niall Lynch had ranted for a solid ten minutes about how “you don't ever have to call me sir!” Adam had remained quietly attentive until Niall Lynch was through, all the while thinking to himself how he hadn't really _meant_ the sir, it was just something to be said.

Above all, when Adam remembered Niall Lynch he remembered the scent of Niall Lynch's preferred whiskey and that night four days before Christmas when Niall Lynch’s enormous hand had shaken his and left a crisp bill behind. Adam had looked down and seen that it was a _hundred dollar_ bill. His throat had closed and his chest had felt tight and he’d been embarrassingly unsure of what must be showing on his face. But when he’d looked up, Niall Lynch was already back in conversation with whichever one of the expensively dressed men he felt like telling a story to. Like it’d been nothing. Adam had looked over to Aurora Lynch, unsure of what to do, and she’d met his eye and given him the faintest of wry smiles, with a subtle arch of her eyebrow that seemed to say, _go ’head. Try to give it back. See how far you get_.

So Adam had kept it, because Aurora Lynch had a point, he hadn’t had the slightest idea how to rebuff the force of nature that was Niall Lynch.

He’d been so, so careful with that money. He’d put it in one of his socks and checked on it _compulsively_ , pulse picking up every time he reached into the drawer and patted the sock to make sure the money was still there.

He remembered how much easier to bear Aurora Lynch's quietness had been, as opposed to Niall Lynch's brashness. Though he remembered privately thinking to himself how out of place Aurora Lynch’s serenity was when considering the antics of her husband and their three boys. Although to be fair, the eldest boy hadn’t really gotten up to antics. Mostly he’d sat still and purposeful at the table alongside the adults, and Adam had recognized the desire to be seen as more than a child, to be taken seriously. His business-like disposition had meant Adam hadn’t even had cause to hear his name for the longest time. Occasionally, though, Declan had been driven to do something rash, like upturning his water glass over Ronan's head, and Adam had felt sure Ronan had simply been facing the deserved consequences of his own actions. Adam had known Ronan's name right away, because Ronan had done things like try to climb to the top of the large bay window, or he’d made off with a cleared serving cart to see how far he could ride it before someone put a stop to him. One memorable night Adam had been horrified but not at all surprised to witness Ronan quite literally swinging from the chandelier. Adam had learned Matthew's name soon enough too, but Matthew was a sweet, sunny child who’d only gotten into trouble because he’d follow Ronan's bad example, crawling after Ronan on all fours underneath the table to assist Ronan in tying the adult’s shoelaces together or cheerily going long when Ronan had decided to use a bread roll as a football. Rowdy as they’d been, though, at the end of the night when Aurora had called, “Boys,” that one word from her had been enough to have all three of them lining up quick and neat as could be.

Above all, when Adam remembered Aurora Lynch, he pictured her dropping into an effortless crouch in her high, high spindly heels so she could be on a child’s level. She’d done that often, but the time that Adam remembered most clearly was the hateful day he’d overheard his father talking and had gone into work with _squirted_ replaying over and over in his head, and he could feel the venom of it spread a little further through him with each heartbeat. Adam had been facing the end of the night when he’d have to go back to his father with dread, and he’d watched as Aurora Lynch knelt at Ronan’s height and put the tidy brown to-go bag the Lynches always took home after dinner in her son’s hands, and gave Ronan a gentle push toward Adam. Adam had known what was in the bag before Ronan brought it to him: five chocolate truffles, same as the Lynches had always ordered to eat sometime later. Ronan had walked up to Adam and thrust the bag at him, with a roll of his eyes that seemed to say, _I know it’s stupid but my mom’s making me and we’re not gonna disappoint my mom so you better take it_. The only word Ronan had said was, “Here.”

Adam had been mortified from the ends of his hair to the soles of his feet at the idea that he’d been wearing his hurt so obviously that little better than strangers could see it, but he’d been simultaneously warmed by the gesture in a way he hadn’t known what to do with. He’d eaten all of the truffles by the dumpster in the alley behind the building, and then he’d thrown the bag away, evidence disposed of but memory deeply ingrained. He’d felt an odd sort of victory as he’d biked home that night, that he’d found something good for himself, despite his father.

He’d found something good, and of course, it hadn’t lasted.

Less than two months after that night, the Veranda was attacked by Colin Greenmantle. Adam hadn’t even been working that night. He’d just heard about it on the news. When he’d tried calling to get more information, his manager had gotten back to him only to say the restaurant was a crime scene under police investigation, and even if they did reopen they couldn’t risk having a child working off books with the scrutiny they were under.

Just like that, Adam had been out of a job.

The reality of how much worse things had been at home while Adam wasn’t working in combination with the money that he had saved up from Niall Lynch’s exorbitant tips was the final push Adam needed to apply to be considered for a spot in that year’s entrance exams for the Academy. Only a handful of young magicians were selected every year. Adam _had_ to be one of them.

He’d biked to the Academy with his completed application and walked into the admissions office in person to say that he’d call or check back in person as often as it took, until they made their decision. He’d known it was unorthodox, but he’d politely made his case until the receptionist behind the desk had given in and agreed to make a note in his file not to call his home phone number or mail anything to his home address. Adam knew she’d written it down; he’d watched her do it. It hadn’t made a damn bit of difference.

Adam’s entire life was defined by the consequences that had come from deciding to submit that application. Consequences that had taken weeks to arrive, and then had uprooted _everything_ in a day. The day everything went as bad as it could possibly go. In some twisted way Adam felt like it was _always_ happening, an excruciating cycle of constant, breathless, soul-consuming guilt.

Adam had come home from school and had known something was terribly wrong the moment he’d come through the door, just by the way his father was sitting. 

“You got mail,” Robert Parrish had said darkly, and Adam had swallowed hard against the sour dread that instinctively constricted his throat because it’d always been worse when his father wouldn’t just come out and tell Adam what he’d done wrong. When Adam could feel his father’s rage building up as surely as you could feel a lightning storm coming, but he hadn’t known the cause of it, and so he’d remained trapped by the fact that he didn't have any hope of trying to stop it. “You think you’re something special, Adam? You think you’re gonna grow up to be one of those prissy show-off magicians that go around thinking they’re better than everybody else? Huh? You think that’s gonna be you someday?” 

Robert Parrish’s hand lashed out and struck the back of Adam’s head. Sometimes, when Adam was walking away because his father sent him to his room or when Adam went to his room on his own thinking that his continued presence only made things worse, and his father struck him like that from behind, Adam would turn around and look at his father’s hands, thinking that his father must have picked something up to hit him with. One of the tools lying around, or a scrap piece of wood, or a rock. But no. It was just Robert Parrish’s hands.

“You think you’d last a week at some uppity little rich boy school where some rich snobs who never made it in the real world are gonna try to make something out of you? How did you think you were ever gonna pay for it, Adam? You can’t have that kind of money hidden away in your cereal box. You think your ma and me were gonna pay for you to waste even more money on some pipe dream you’re too stupid to realize is never gonna happen? You think you can go off and blow that sort of money and we’re supposed to take you back when you come crying about how you couldn’t cut it there?”

Adam didn't say anything, but something in his face must have given him away because his father took a step forward and his eyes were that much angrier.

“How can you be that stupid, that you really thought you got some kinda shot at this? Why would they want you? What can you even do that some overpriced school is gonna wanna keep you around for, even if you could pay for it? You ain't no magician, and I got news for you, if you ever even think of pulling a stunt like this again you're sure as hell gonna wish you had some magic to help you. You know how much they charge you just for the privilege of putting in your damn fool application to their school?”

Adam did. He knew exactly the cost of the 60 dollars that had come out of Niall Lynch's 100 dollar tip. He knew exactly how much of the remaining 40 dollars he'd spent on groceries and toiletries, slowly and carefully enough that it wouldn't draw unnecessary attention from his parents. He knew he had exactly 6 dollars and 21 cents of Niall Lynch's 100 dollar tip left.

“You just went ahead and did it without a word to your mother or me. You think we didn't need that money, Adam? You think it's right for you to go and throw all that money down the toilet for nothing when your ma and me kill ourselves every day trying to pay the bills and buy food for your ungrateful mouth? Don't just stand there staring at me with that dumb look on your face, answer me, boy!”

Adam never should have let it get that far. He knew - he _knew_ \- that when his father got angry like this it only ever made it worse if he let his father keep talking. Keep getting louder and closer. His father only got madder as he went on, Adam had to do something to try to diffuse the situation, he had to figure out what to say to get things at least a little more under control. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t think past the seizing apprehension pressing on his chest and weighing in his stomach. And still every moment he didn’t act he _knew_ it was the wrong thing to do - how many times had he heard some iteration of _what are you too slow to understand what I’m saying to you_ or _at least nod your head and pretend like you got some brains in there_ \- and his throat worked and his thoughts whirred like tires caught in mud and none of him would cooperate enough to voice anything at all. Because in the face of Robert Parrish’s temper, there was no right thing to do.

And then Robert Parrish's hands were in motion, and Adam knew it would be bad, and he didn't really remember closing his eyes, but he must have, because he heard a cry of pain but it wasn't his, and when he opened his eyes

 

his father's wrists were bound in thin green vines, spiked with spindly-looking wickedly curved thorns.

No one moved.

For a long, long moment it felt like the world was collapsing away from him and there was nothing but the too-loud thud of Adam's own heartbeat.

_heknewbetterheknewbetterheknewbetter_

His father was staring at him like he didn't know what Adam was, his face chalk white and his eyes horrified and hateful.

Several more beats went by, and a muscle in his father's jaw ticked dangerously, and then he wrenched his wrists apart. Between his wrists the vine snapped with an oddly distinct _snk_ , too thin to be very substantial.

The vines still remained wrapped around his wrist, like shackles. His father walked unevenly to the kitchen and got a knife, cutting the vines from each wrist. Then he turned, knife in hand. Pinpricks of red welling at his wrists.

The world narrowed down to the edge of the knife’s blade. His father was coming toward him, and his father was yelling now, so loud and so full of rage, Adam couldn't process the words: _fucking dare_ and _raised you_ and _in my fucking house_.

There was no possibility in which Robert Parrish wouldn't use the knife. Adam knew that, knew he never should have used magic against his father, he hadn't meant to, not consciously, hadn't he always known the consequences?

He could foresee it like he was watching it on a TV screen. Himself, dead on the floor, nothing but stab wound after stab wound after stab wound. His father, shouting at the police that Adam used magic against him, that Adam had threatened him, that no one was going to tell him how to keep his wife safe under his own roof.

Something in him wanted to protect himself from that vision. Something in him was transmuting the fear that was hollowing him out inside into something he could use. Something in him had spent too long down and battered in a corner, and had grown teeth.

Vines grew around the knife; darker and hardier and coarser than the ones before. His father fought to wrest back control of the knife. The vines vanished, as unthinkably as they had appeared. The blade buried itself into his father.

His father staggered to his knees.

Everything constricted so tight behind his ribs it made everything else go white at the edges, and Adam thought that whiteness would simply swallow him. His father was crashing to the floor, blood already spreading, spreading, dark and horrific and consuming.

Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.

His mother appeared. She looked at the body of his father, on the floor. Her face was ghastly and ashen. She might have spoken. She was staring at Adam like she knew what he was.

_whatdidIdowhatdidIdowhatdidIdo_

He was shaking. Head to toe, violently cold, he could feel it in his teeth. He couldn’t make himself stop, he didn’t believe he ever would.

“What did you do, Adam?”

Did his mother say it, or was that his own imagination at work? It was hard to tell.

How it had happened was so clear in his memories, re-lived again and again and again. The after, the fallout, that was a sick blur.

At some point, his mother walked away from him and left him there with the body. He remembered the sound of her slamming her bedroom door made him jump something awful.

He remembered kneeling by his father, thinking that if his father was a supernatural creature, a werewolf, maybe, with their dangerous unpredictable tempers, he’d have some way of explaining this.

He hadn’t been consciously aware of what he was doing, he hadn’t known he _could_ do it, but his magic became what he needed. It transformed his father’s body to look like a werewolf.

He remembered a falling feeling inside of him so overwhelming and distinct he was amazed he was able to stay upright and conscious when a knock came from the front door.

He didn’t move. He only went through the motions of standing up and answering the door when his mother came out of the bedroom and said simply that she wasn’t going to do it.

It had been Mr. Gray at the door. The first time Adam had ever seen him. Adam hadn’t been in the right mind space to question it. Mr. Gray had walked over to his father’s body and asked some questions Adam figured he must have done a somewhat decent job of answering. He remembered Mr. Gray saying, “This is impressive work,” and calmly and clearly instructing Adam on a few small changes he ought to make, details to the muzzle and canine teeth and claws, which Adam obeyed to the best of his ability.

The police came. Strobe lights and hands casually placed on gun holsters and low, falsely soothing authoritative voices. They asked some more questions and Adam figured he must have done a somewhat decent job of answering those too. Mr. Gray fielded most of them. The police questioned Adam’s mother too, but she never had anything to say to the police. She told them that she’d been in her room and that it happened so quick and that she didn’t know she didn’t know she didn’t know.

The police left them a report and cards for counselors, or something to that effect, Adam vaguely remembered, which Mr. Gray took. Then the police said that a retrieval unit for the disposal of supernatural creatures would be on their way. And that seemed to be that.

Adam assumed the retrieval until did come. He wasn’t there for it. Mr. Gray had offered to let Adam come with him, said he had a contact who could teach Adam more about his magical abilities. Adam’s mother hadn’t objected at any point, so Adam got in Mr. Gray’s car and Mr. Gray drove him away.

Adam didn’t remember much at all about his first drive to 300 Fox Way, except that after a few miles he’d asked Mr. Gray if he could please pull the car over and Mr. Gray had, promptly and without question. Adam stumbled out of the car and dropped to his hands and knees, and violently retched up everything in his stomach. When he finally sat back, Mr. Gray brought him a handful of napkins and a sealed bottle of water. Adam got back in the car. Mr. Gray drove him the rest of the way to 300 Fox Way, and Adam’s life was irrevocably drastically changed.

Mr. Gray had given him a safe place to go. He’d never judged Adam. He was a patient and concise teacher.

Adam wasn’t going to refuse him anything without good reason.

 

* * *

 

Adam didn't want to be back here at the Veranda.

“I don't want to go back out there,” Cialina muttered in an undertone; it sounded like she maybe half meant it.

“What happened?” Adam asked mildly. She seemed distinctly eager to go out and serve her table before.

Cialina peered over her shoulder and dropped her voice even lower, as if she were at risk of being overheard all the way back here in the kitchens. “He wants more whiskey, but I don't think…”

He shouldn't have it, but she didn't want to have to tell him he wasn’t getting it.

There was no need to specify the 'he’ she was referring to.

“I'll handle it,” Adam said, and _knew_ it was an idiotic move, even as he said it.

Cialina's brow creased a little. “Really? Are you sure? You don't have to.”

“I don't mind,” Adam said. Idiotic.

He felt Cialina's eyes on him as he put together an Arnold Palmer.

“He wants alcohol,” Cialina told him, unnecessarily.

“I got that,” Adam assured her, unhelpfully.

“Okay. He's gonna find you in an alley later, but okay, it's your life…” Adam heard her muttering behind him as he walked out.

He felt a curious disconnect between his mind and body as he approached the Lynches’ table. His thoughts were calm and his face was composed, but his heart was thundering hard enough to burst in his chest, which struck him as a little alarming, and more to the point, in absolutely no way warranted.

He made quick work of swiping the empty whiskey glass and replacing it with the new drink he'd brought over, all the while keeping his gaze on Matthew, the most cheerful and easygoing of the Lynches by a substantial margin. “Y'all doin’ all right?” he asked, leaning into his accent because he knew that it was effective even if he didn't like it.

“Yeah!” Matthew enthused, giving Adam an enormous smile. “Oh, could we get some mozzarella sticks?” he asked, with the air of a child holding up a package of cookies in the supermarket.

“Matthew,” Declan said with well-worn patience. “You already finished the sliders and the quesadillas, and we haven't even ordered our entrées yet.”

“Don't worry, I'll have room for it!” Matthew told Declan earnestly, and Declan sighed faintly in concession.

Adam smiled back at Matthew - he had to, he dared anyone _not_ to smile back at Matthew - and said, “Mozzarella sticks for the table,” and was about to ask them if they wanted anything else when he risked a glance at Ronan and

_shit shit fuck shit_

Ronan knew him. Ronan was looking back at him, and Ronan _knew_ him, there was recognition in his sharp blue eyes, hostile and mistrustful and unmistakable.

“Cialina will be back soon to take your orders,” Adam heard himself say, in a blandly pleasant tone that didn’t at all match whatever it was that he was feeling beneath the spike of adrenaline. He gave the table a professionally courteous sort of nod and made a retreat for the kitchens.

Cialina was waiting for him, shifting slightly from foot to foot, both visibly concerned for him and visibly eager for fresh gossip. “What happened? Did he say anything to you?”

“Not a word.”

In retrospect, it was stupid to go out into the alley. One, because it veered into the realm of pathetic, like he was slinking away to find a place to lick his wounds.

Two, because it was one of the first places a person would go to look for him if they had a will to do so.

When Ronan Lynch shoved the door open, Adam's first thought was something along the lines of _Cialina warned me about this_ followed by how he didn't think it really counted because she'd been being sarcastic. Or had she been.

Adam's gaze dropped immediately to Ronan's hands, just in case, but they were clenched at Ronan's sides, not making any moves toward him.

“The fuck are you doing here?”

“Getting a little air before I hand out my nine-thousandth glass of champagne?”

“Don't,” Ronan said, every taut line of his body radiating fury, “make me ask again.”

“I'm working,” Adam said evenly. It wasn't a lie.

“Tell me what the fuck you're doing coming back here,” Ronan demanded between his teeth; the words came out like a detonation, leaving shrapnel in the form of the angry rise and fall of Ronan's chest and the oddly _caught_ sort of feeling hollowing out a space in Adam, somewhere behind his ribs.

“Back?” _You really remember me?_ He must, but what reason would Ronan Lynch have to remember Adam Parrish?

Ronan’s gaze carried the thin, edged threat of a razor blade as he scoured Adam's face. “If you wanted to be slick about it, why the fuck would you bring me a drink I haven't asked for since I was 11?”

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Adam wasn't normally so foolhardy. He supposed there had to be a part of him that had wanted to push, that wanted to try to interact, that was hungry for any sort of reaction. That didn’t think it was fair that the Lynch family had left a lasting impact on him, and had been too tempted to try to see if he could make himself of any sort of consequence to them. But even that small, vastly impractical part of himself had never gone so far as to give credence to the idea that any of the Lynch brothers would recognize him, or _care_.

While he’d been absorbed in his own contemplation, Ronan’s expression had gone even more tense, brow and nose furrowed and teeth exposed. It reminded Adam distantly of the stray pit bull mix that used to skulk around his trailer. Ronan’s voice was a low growl. “If you’re one of those pieces of shit looking for an opportunity to take a shot at my brothers, you’re not gonna have much longer to regret it.”

“I’m not here to harm your brothers, I’m here to try and protect you from the shitstorm you went walking right in to.”

“The fuck are you talking about?” Ronan demanded sharply.

“I work with Mr. Gray, I'm here because he asked me to keep eyes on you.” Mr. Gray was bound to be awfully dissatisfied with Adam. Adam had never had this kind of trouble following Mr. Gray's instructions before.

“Mr. Gray sent you?” Ronan asked, surveying Adam with a look that shifted faintly from the ferocity that had been there at the thought of someone coming after his family to more generalized ire at Adam's general presence. “Then we're gonna have to talk to him, aren't we.”

It took a while to get Mr. Gray on the phone. He wouldn't have placed Adam in his stead if he weren't doing something important.

Though once they’d successfully gotten Mr. Gray on the phone, Adam was fairly sure they were mutually agreed that they wished they hadn’t.

Mr. Gray, taking in the information that they remembered one another in stride, made swift arrangements over the phone for Adam to move Ronan to a safe house. They were to stay together at the safe house until further notice.

Happy New Year’s.

 

* * *

 

Blue would have found it easier to dislike Gansey if he wouldn't insist on doing this sort of thing. Things like going above and beyond to solve supernatural cases, when most police officers thought of supernatural cases as thankless work that was verging on insulting to be assigned to. Things like following up with potential witnesses most of the higher-ups in the police force would never bother with, or if they did, they'd send the newest rookie at the bottom of the totem pole to do it. Gansey went himself, because for all that his pampered upbringing could lead him to sound thoughtlessly callow, Gansey truly cared.

“I appreciate you accompanying me, Jane. Powell seemed like he knew more than he was saying. I don't think he wanted to talk to me, though. I'm hoping you'll be able to get more out of him than I could, you have a knack for this sort of thing.”

This was said a bit sheepishly, and Blue was about to make a comment about how literally anyone else he could have brought with him would have had a better knack for not putting their foot in their mouth than Gansey. But then he smiled at her - not his artificial smile, the one he'd learned young as the distinguished heir to the city's mayor and the city's chief of police, but his real one, lopsided and bright - and she couldn't quite bring herself to.

“What are we hoping to learn from this guy?” Blue asked, trying to focus on the case.

“Well, I’m not entirely sure. What we do know is, Robert Neuhmann and his wife Ruth went for a walk in the woods Sunday around noon. Around midnight, Mrs. Neuhmann found herself on her front porch with no knowledge of how she came to be there or what happened in those 12 hours. But on the porch around her were some bloody rags and bits of bones. The lab confirmed the DNA is a match for Robert Neuhmann. Naturally, we questioned the neighbors to see if anyone had seen anything or heard anything helpful. No one had. But if Mr. Neuhmann angered the fae folk in those woods and the fae folk consumed him before transporting his remains and his wife out of their territory - which is our leading theory, since there was evidence of very tiny teeth marks on the bones - then no one would. There’s probably not a whole lot more we can do here, only...as I said, none of the neighbors had much they could tell us, but Powell, he seemed especially tight-lipped. I understand there are many people who aren’t comfortable with speaking to the police in any capacity, and that may be all there is to it, but,” Gansey let out a heavy breath.

“It’ll probably sound cliche to you, Jane, but I’ve got an instinct for this sort of thing that’s served me well over the years. Powell looked - ‘haunted’ probably sounds like I’m overstating things, but I can’t think of a better way to describe it. He was scared of something, and I can’t help thinking that we really have no idea what happened Sunday. Mrs. Neuhmann was unable or unwilling to say anything about what transpired to anger the fae folk, and if we don’t know that, how do we know if their anger has abated? I’m worried they may not be contented with just Mr. Neuhmann as their victim. I’m hoping he’ll be a little more open with you, and that your knowledge of the fae folk might mean that you’ll be able to pick up on signs that I might miss.”

“Worth a shot,” Blue shrugged at him as they pulled up to Powell’s house.

“Worth a shot,” Gansey echoed grandly as they walked up to the door.

No one answered when Gansey knocked and gave his official policeman spiel, so Blue tried the door handle. It wasn’t locked, so Blue pushed the door open and walked in, despite Gansey hissing _Jane_ behind her.

It only took a few steps into the living room for her to spot Powell. For her to see the mouth of the rifle that he was holding.

It all happened so fast.

Gansey shouting her name. Slamming into her side. The impossibly loud sound of a shot going off as she hit the floor. Gansey dropping by her side.

Gansey was making a terrible noise. Low and pained, like he couldn’t get enough air. When Blue scrambled to get a better look at him, she saw red spreading across his uniform shirt. Something convulsed painfully in her chest. She said his name but her voice had gone so taut and off-pitch not even she could really make sense of it. She tried to keep her hands steady enough to reach for him, to inspect the damage, to put pressure on the wound, but he jerked away from her violently and yelled, “No!”

What was she supposed to do? Blue couldn’t think past the sight of Gansey’s blood and the idea that with every second that went by she was that much closer to losing him, and she didn’t know what to _do_. She had to call 911, Gansey had been shot.

Gansey had been shot. She turned to the shooter. There was something very wrong with his skin, a hard gray unnatural texture to the arm that was holding the rifle. The same wrongness had spread up his throat, too, the same rigid grayness. The man’s eyes were terror-stricken, the whites of them flashing in a voiceless scream. Blue kicked the gun away from him to get it out of his reach and then hastened to pick it up for herself. Then she turned the gun on him. Not that he was moving. She had the terrible idea that he was turning to stone. She’d worry about that later.

She turned back to Gansey, but he was crawling away from her on all fours, his entire frame shuddering and trembling so violently it looked like he would quake apart.

“Gansey -”

“No!” Gansey growled sharply in a voice that didn’t sound like his at all. “Back!”

Blue stood frozen as before her eyes Gansey changed. It was awful to watch but she couldn't make herself look away, like watching a train wreck. All of him was stretching and elongating, skin rippling and tearing with dark hair - fur? As he shook Blue could hear low, low grinding and scraping sounds, and it was painful enough just to witness, she didn't want to think about what it was like for Gansey.

The worst part to watch would probably have been his face, but that was ducked low, out of her line of sight. She had the feeling it was intentional.

“Gansey?”

The wolf let out a low growl and darted through the closest open door, into a bedroom. Blue, curiously detached, followed after him as far as the doorway. Some part of her wondered if she should be trying to lock the door, lock him in. But he’d run, he hadn’t tried to attack, and now he was trying to sequester himself in the corner by the far side of the bed. She shut the door with far more quiet precision than necessary; when she took a step away from it she was far more unsteady on her feet than she would have liked.

Jesus. All the times she’d sensed something _off_ about him but then it’d gone away, that must have been about monthly and she’d never bothered _thinking it out_ , all the times she’d _seen_ how uncomfortable he’d gotten when one of the assholes in his unit made some kind of asinine joke about if werewolves pissed indoors or outdoors in human form, all the times she’d looked at his mouth when she knew she shouldn’t and had errant thoughts about how sharp his teeth looked, all the times -

She shook her head jerkily and hefted the rifle she still held in an unyielding grip with her left hand, and went back to Powell.

Now that Gansey wasn’t in life-threatening danger, it was easier for her to focus on Powell’s condition. It was only getting worse. The grayness was darker and even more unnaturally solid-looking. The white muscle shirt he was wearing made it easy to see that it had claimed almost the entirety of his arms, only the ends of his fingers had any of their original color to them. A very cold part of Blue very much doubted he’d be able to shoot a rifle now even if it’d been sitting in his hand. His chest looked worse too, barely able to move at all, and the grayness had cracked and crawled all the way up his throat to encrust his jaw and mouth and was slowly creeping over his nose. His eyes didn’t look terrified anymore; they looked too far gone for that.

The part of her that could enhance magic or drain the power from it told her that this was fae work, that this curse started crystallizing him from his core and would spread out until there was no more of him left. If she focused all of her energy, she may be able to slow it down the faintest bit, or speed it up. There wasn't much point either way though: there would be no stopping the curse or reversing it. The practical side of her knew better than to try to interfere with fae magic regardless, especially when she had no idea of the specifics of the curse that was cast. The petty side of her wasn't feeling especially kindly disposed toward him, anyhow.

They'd never know why Powell fired the gun. Maybe he’d assumed whoever was entering his home was aligned with the fae and was sent to make his final moments even worse than they already were. Maybe he didn't want the police investigating whatever happened that displeased the fae so thoroughly in the first place. The only sure thing was they wouldn't be getting any information out of him now. Blue turned away from him.

It wasn't the most important thing by far, but as Gansey had transformed, his clothing had torn and pieces of them were scattered across the floor in shreds. As Blue went to pick them up, she found a crumpled looking bullet lying there on the floor, covered in a faint red sheen. She stared at it for a heartbeat, before slowly picking it up between one of the strips of cloth. She took it over to the kitchen sink, and let it fall in with a hollow sort of clatter. She turned both faucets as far as they would go, and let the water run as she gathered the rest of the remains of Gansey's uniform. She left the clothes in a small pile on the counter next to the garbage. She wasn't sure what Gansey would want to do with them. She let the water run a little longer, even though there were no traces of red left. When she finally turned the water off, she wasn't sure why but she felt the urge to pick the used little bit of metal up.

She was still turning the bullet over and over in her hands when the aged, creaky floorboards alerted her that Gansey was taking human steps toward the door of the bedroom.

Blue tucked the bullet in one of her many pockets and walked toward the bedroom door.

“Blue?”

“Yeah?”

“Would you do me a favor? There's a bag in the trunk of the car. Would you please get it for me?”

“Sure.”

Blue hated how cautious and distant he sounded. How he actually used her real name. How he spoke like anything that broke the silence might risk one or the other of them shattering at the slightest provocation.

The duffle bag wasn't hard to find. She brought it in and knocked twice on the door Gansey was still behind.

Gansey opened it a crack and reached out his hand only the bare minimum that was required to take the bag. He closed the door again.

Blue waited.

Finally he opened the door once more. He stood in his fresh uniform - packed for the eventuality of such an incident? - with a look on his face that was close to his official police ‘I'm afraid I have bad news’ facade, only his eyes wouldn't meet hers and there was something in the way that his throat worked so hard to swallow that made her want to throw her arms around him.

“I'm sorry,” Gansey said, in a professional sort of voice, though not nearly as professional as he normally managed when he felt the need. “Are you all right?”

“I'm not hurt.” Blue's voice was tight and she struggled for some sort of calm. “But I'd be closer to all right if you wouldn't apologize for somebody going off and shooting you, and if you'd _talk_ to me.” _Like a real person_ , she didn't add, but she figured it was still perfectly clear going unsaid.

Her hands had reached out to find his chest, without her having any conscious memory of deciding to move, but she couldn't honestly bring herself to care much when she felt so relieved to have tangible proof that he was all right.

Gansey was relieved by the touch too, she could sense it, tension lightening off of his shoulders like fog clearing from the sea. “Yeah,” he said in a quieter voice, much closer to his real voice, and promised, “We'll talk, Jane.”

He placed his hands very gently on her forearms, like this was the very epitome of physical affection, and Blue kind of wanted to laugh or sob, but she settled for sliding her arms around his neck and pulling him into something like a proper hug.

They stood like that for a few warm heartbeats. Eventually, though, they both remembered they were currently in a stranger’s house where Gansey had only avoided dying from a gunshot wound by virtue of being a werewolf.

Gansey carefully disengaged and cleared his throat. “Powell?”

“Cursed,” Blue replied. She figured it was easier for Gansey to see for himself than for her to explain, so they walked over to the body.

Though it barely qualified as a body anymore. The face and hands had caved and crumbled away into little more than grainy gray dust.

It was a gruesome sight, to the point that her brain simply seemed unable to take it in as real, though she suspected the image would lurk in some nightmarish corner of her brain for the rest of the foreseeable future.

Gansey knelt beside it and said in a quiet murmur, “poor bastard.”

Blue agreed that it was a terrible fate for anyone, but even so, she'd never understand how Gansey could have so much genuine sympathy for someone who almost murdered him in cold blood not even an hour ago. She could only shake her head and sit beside him as he called it in, and help him get all his shredded clothing into the empty duffle bag and into the trunk before officers from his unit arrived on the scene.

Blue and Gansey maintained that they had arrived for a routine follow up of a witness to find the body in that condition, and that all went smooth enough. But then Gansey asked Burton to escort Blue home while he got a hold of Ruth Neuhmann and discussed options for police protection with her, and Blue shoved her hands deep into her pockets to resist the urge to deck him.

“Tell them to do it,” Blue insisted resolutely with the barest incline of her head toward Burton and his partner.

“Jane-”

“ _Tell them to do it_.”

“We can cover it,” Burton interjected somewhat awkwardly.

And so Blue secured her usual spot in the passenger seat of Gansey’s police cruiser. For a few miles they just drove; it was easy to take comfort in the long-standing tradition of it.

But Blue still had the weight of a bullet in her pocket and she was damn well going to get answers. “Gansey.”

Gansey let out a heavy sigh. “When I was ten, my mother held a big political party when she was starting her campaign for mayor. She’s fairly conservative. She had two fairly picture-perfect children: Helen was excelling in the Academy, I was all lined up to start in a year or so and my tutors only had good things to say. A large part of my mother's angle was a focus on _keeping our children safe from supernatural threats_. It made a certain kind of sense. The thing is _supernatural threats_ aren't always easy to recognize.”

Gansey’s eyes were far away. “I was by the woods playing with some of the other kids when a man came over and told me my mother needed me in the house. I guess I should have been more suspicious, but my mother’s one of the best at working a party, she'd been everywhere and nowhere all night, and she had so many people working with her on her campaign team, it didn't seem odd to me. We’d only just gotten into the house, into the lower study, and I guess he decided it was isolated enough, because he - transformed. It's a myth that werewolves transform during the full moon: the change is hormonal based, though a werewolf’s chemical makeup is sensitive to the cycle of the moon. But I'm sure I'm telling you information you already know. Anyway. It could have been worse. It wasn't really an _attack_ , the intention wasn't to cause pain, the intention was to turn me, and that was precisely what he accomplished. One bite. Then I guess he left while he could, it - the change is a grueling experience, I couldn't recall it very clearly. After the initial change, after I’d settled, it was scary but I — I don’t know. I’ve never changed very often, or for very long. Aside from those few - granted, rather alarming - out-of-body sort of experiences, I still — I don’t know. I mostly felt like I was still me. I didn’t feel that different, but. Nothing else was the same. Golden heir to closely guarded secret in less than 24 hours.”

He cleared his throat in that way he did when he thought he was being self-pitying. “I think one of the things that bothers me the most is that it was never going to serve the purpose he wanted. Assuming that he was hoping my parents would be more sympathetic toward supernatural creatures if their son was one. Or assuming that he wanted to intimidate my parents into silence on supernatural issues. Either way, my parents’ views didn't change much. I was kept under the radar. My parents made their excuses that I was too ill to attend the Academy and I continued on with my private tutors. It just wasn’t discussed, especially in my parents’ social circles. If someone is unfortunate enough to undergo a supernatural transformation, the family tends to make some pretense to send them away to some secluded property of theirs out of sight and out of mind. I shouldn’t complain, my parents were never like that, but sometimes they’d look at me like...it might be better — Helen’s probably handled it the best, she’s gone under an assumed name and founded some of the only support groups for survivors of supernatural violence that are geared to help supernatural victims themselves.” Gansey shrugged his shoulders slightly. “I spent a lot of years traveling a lot of places researching potential cures.” He shook his head in a silent indication of negative results. “This is life for me.”

Blue wasn’t sure how deep that quiet, weary acceptance truly ran, or what it had cost him to achieve. She leaned a little into his arm, which he’d kept tense and at a deliberately maintained distance from hers, until she felt him relax a little. “I’m glad I know. It doesn’t change anything.”

It wasn’t strictly true. It made a thousand small details she’d observed about him align, it cast a different light on all of her memories, it forced her to reconsider him. But in the most important ways, it was the truth.

Gansey didn’t speak, but he let himself lean into her.

It was so much easier to dislike Gansey, before she really knew him.

 

* * *

 

Adam hadn’t been happy to be forced to keep his nose down in a safe house, but he’d had nothing on Ronan Lynch. Ronan had raged so aggressively that Adam thought Ronan might just get him out of this assignment, but Matthew had looked at Ronan with enormous worried eyes and Ronan had ultimately given in.

To say it was an uncomfortable arrangement would’ve been a massive understatement.

Though as time went on Adam had to admit he grew more fond of Ronan. Part of Adam thought that maybe this was one of the only ways he could form any kind of somewhat passable relationship: when he and the other person involved had no choice in the matter.

Ronan was difficult by nature, but after those first few rocky days, Ronan seemed to realize that this was the way things were and decided he might as well find ways to entertain himself while it lasted.

Ronan couldn’t stay still. He always had to be doing something. Adam didn’t have any brothers or sisters so he’d had no experience sharing space and interacting with someone daily this way. At Fox Way he’d always kept to himself, too many different people passing through too quickly to offer a similar sort of circumstance.

They played video games. Adam would have assumed that if Ronan were going to play video games, they would be the loud, exorbitantly gory first-person shooter kind. But Ronan liked Mario Kart. He was infuriatingly good thanks to endless practice with Matthew. Adam had no previous practice, but he played enough times with Ronan that he got the hang of it.

The first night he managed to beat Ronan, Ronan rewarded him by waiting until Adam fell asleep and then pelted him with a large, very blue something that looked like an abstract impression of a turtle shell and had a rubbery consistency that reminded Adam of a kickball.

“Blue shell!” Ronan shouted gleefully into the quiet that was customary for 2 AM - except when one was living with Ronan Lynch - and then he took off like a shot out of Adam's door and down the hallway.

Without thinking, Adam wrenched the blankets out of his way and gave chase, because what else was one supposed to do in this scenario?

He didn't quite know what to do with Ronan when he caught him, though. He gave Ronan a (somewhat drowsy) punch to the arm and then they ended up sitting on top of the washer and dryer units eating Rice Krispie cereal. Ronan told Adam stories from his childhood where he probably fancied himself the hero, but it sounded to Adam like Declan repeatedly saved him from his inordinate tendency toward pyromania, until Adam told him that they really ought to get back to sleep.

They played other games, too. Billiards and foosball and air hockey. Sometimes these were the real thing, because of course the sort of safe houses Ronan Lynch deigned to stay at had to have big, expensive, high-end versions of whatever sorts of games he wanted. Sometimes Ronan put together his own versions of games with spoons or spatulas or sticks or whatever else he managed to scavenge up, because he was a brat that way.

Oftentimes Ronan would just decide he was bored and would bug Adam into playing Slaps or King of the Hill.

Adam had no logical reason why or how this endeared Ronan to him, but nevertheless on some level Adam found himself somewhat endeared.

Adam had become fond of Ronan’s brothers. Well, he had a certain amount of respect for Declan, he supposed. But he was fond enough of Matthew to count the feeling toward both of the brothers. Truly, no one could be in Matthew Lynch’s presence and not feel _some_ fondness. Although, for the sake of keeping the safe house safe, the Lynch brothers didn’t stop by the safe house, so Adam mostly only interacted with them while he went with Ronan to mass.

St. Agnes was firmly Lynch family territory. The parishioners were made up almost entirely of allies to the family, and the church was as well defended against supernatural threat as any building could be. Ronan was insistent on going, which had taken Adam by surprise originally, and Mr. Gray hadn’t felt the need to stop Ronan going, though Mr. Gray still wanted Adam to stay with Ronan. The first time Adam went to St. Agnes was an uneasy sort of experience.

“You really felt the need to bring him to church?” Declan asked in a disapproving undertone but with little enough effort put into speaking quietly that Adam thought he was meant to hear.

“Yeah,” Ronan shot back defiantly, not quietly at all. “Guess you’re just gonna have to get used to it cuz I’m not planning on replacing him before next Sunday with _Brianna_. Or _Kayleigh_.”

Adam wasn’t sure what to take away from this, and he thought he was better off not thinking about it too hard.

Mostly Adam found mass boring, between the bits where he felt awkward about how clearly he didn’t know what he was doing, hastening to follow after Ronan as they stood or knelt or sat. The majority of his entertainment came from exchanging faces with Matthew, which Matthew loved to do, or watching Matthew going through phases of starting to drift gently off and then perking up again like an eager puppy, which happened on a semi-regular basis. Matthew was the safest thing to focus on.

Adam had also become fond of Gansey, although he had disliked Gansey intensely at first. Barely two nights after they’d settled into their new living arrangement, Ronan had paced from room to room to room before declaring that he needed to get out of here and that he wanted pizza. Adam had tried to argue that they should just order delivery, but that’d only made things worse. Ronan was insistent that he didn’t just want any pizza, he wanted to go to Nino’s, a tacky looking restaurant Adam knew of but had never bothered going inside of, and furthermore, Ronan wanted to meet a friend there. It was apparent that this was a hill Ronan was prepared to die on, and Adam was kind of prepared to let him.

Richard Campbell Gansey III had apparently set all sorts of records for himself on the police force and looked like he was bred to grace the cover of a Ralph Lauren catalog. It turned out he in fact owned the safe house they were occupying, and was old school friends with Ronan from their pre-Academy years. Ronan told Adam ominously that Gansey bought the factory-turned-safe-house years back because Gansey sometimes needed some alone time from his family, and it was obvious that there was more of a story there than Ronan or Gansey was telling. So they were already off to a great start. Then Gansey, trying far too hard to be genial, gallantly attempted to break the ice by asking, “Tell me, how did you two come to know each other to end up in your present circumstances?”

“Saw him by the side of the road and he looked hungry,” Ronan muttered from between the leather bands on his wrist that he was gnawing on.

There was exaggerated horror on Gansey’s face at Ronan’s utter lack of decorum, which somehow made it a little easier for Adam to roll his eyes at Ronan and say, “Shithead.”

Then Gansey ordered avocado on his pizza, and the night basically just kept getting worse from there.

Adam may have jumped the gun somewhat on envisioning months stretching forward of being forced to be the third wheel to Gansey and Ronan’s long-established inside jokes and obvious history. Gansey was on the force and was obviously serious about his career: how many reasons could there be to explain why he’d be so willing to risk that for Ronan Lynch, who’d been raised to brazenly defy the law and took personal pride in it besides?

But when Gansey called and talked to Adam - which Gansey did, seeing as how Ronan was impossible about phones - Gansey’s concern was clearly genuine and didn’t seem romantically inclined. Adam thought it felt oddly parental. Adam found he liked conversations with Gansey, who had a keen mind and was well-read on a variety of subjects, from history to cars to the supernatural.

It was nice to have someone to complain to who understood Ronan’s ridiculousness. Like when they’d gone on a snack run, and Ronan had thrown in the ingredients to make chocolate chip cookies into the cart and _insisted_ on buying them, remaining supremely unconcerned in the face of the fact that they had no oven.

When they’d gotten back, Ronan had mixed together the ingredients and ate the batter right off the spoon, evidently finding no use for an oven in any part of this process. He’d held the spoon right in front of Adam's mouth, but Adam wouldn't eat it.

“That stuff can make you sick,” he’d told Ronan, half-hoping Ronan _would_ get sick, just to prove a point.

Ronan had scoffed around the spoon dangling from his mouth. “Imagine the look on Piper's face if she got word that she couldn't kill me because I'd already died of food poisoning. No, really. Picture it. That’d be a win.”

Gansey told Adam a story of Ronan putting an uncooked brick of ramen noodles between two s’mores pop-tarts and eating it like a sandwich. Gansey was certain that if Adam asked Ronan, Ronan would still claim it’d tasted good.

The next time they planned a trip to Nino’s, Adam asked Gansey to pick up edible cookie dough from the shop he'd seen before in the mall.

Ronan took one look at the little container Gansey brought in with him and went, “Way to take all the fun out of it, Parrish.”

Adam merely cocked an eyebrow. “Does that mean you're not gonna eat it?”

“I didn't say that,” Ronan said, flipping Adam off as he went to the condiments station to get plastic spoons.

Gansey had sense enough not to say anything aloud, but he looked pleased that things seemed to be going well. Adam couldn’t help feeling a little pleased himself.

Adam had even become fond of Ronan’s pet raven. Adam wasn’t too sure he wanted much to do with a raven, initially, but he couldn’t just ignore her. Chainsaw had spent a lot of time watching Adam with her dark glossy eyes in the beginning, and she’d always become extra alert whenever she noticed Adam watching her back. Even small movements on Adam’s part had her crouching down just the slightest bit, clearly prepared to make a fight-or-flight decision if it came down to it. When she ventured particularly close to Adam - a rarity, in the beginning - Adam would gently and patiently reach out a hand toward her. She wouldn’t move, but her eyes would go especially keen and the threat of that sharp beak lunging for Adam’s fingers felt distinctly imminent. Adam persisted. He wouldn’t retreat; he’d move his hand closer and closer in slow, slow gradual steady increments until she permitted him to touch her. Eventually, she came over on her own and settled contentedly on Adam’s shoulder, and as Adam carefully stroked her silken feathers he could swear she was pleased with herself for her own mastery of reverse psychology. Adam sometimes had the vague suspicion that there was a metaphor playing out here, if one were interested in reaching for those sorts of notions, but Adam was not.

Most of all, Adam thought he was endeared by how Ronan so clearly craved Adam's time. Admittedly, this tended toward the obnoxious. If Adam was reading for too long, Ronan would wrestle the book away from him. If Adam was talking to Gansey for too long, Ronan would wrestle the phone away from him. If there was nothing in specific taking up Adam's attention but Ronan still didn't think he had enough of it, Ronan would wrestle the pillow away from him when they sat on the couch together. Juvenile as those wrestling matches could be, there was something novel about having someone there who wanted to spend time with him just for the sake of it, who Adam wanted to spend time with despite himself.

At the very least, Ronan was never boring.

There was the night Ronan had been particularly restless, and made a break for it to go for a drive. Adam had wrestled the keys from him outside, mere feet away from the car. He was keenly aware he’d only gotten the keys away from Ronan because Ronan hadn’t been expecting it, and in keeping with the spirit of his success, he didn’t try to make a run for it with the keys, which Ronan would have expected. Instead he hurled himself into the driver’s seat and slammed and locked the door before Ronan could react, keeping Ronan on the wrong side of the door and the keys securely out of Ronan’s reach.

“You little _shit_ ,” Ronan told him, sounding both lethally pissed off and also, if Adam wasn’t mistaken, kind of impressed.

“What was that?” Adam asked, peering up at Ronan through the closed driver’s side window as innocently as he could. “Couldn’t quite catch it.”

Ronan leaned in close, and blew slowly on the glass, right where Adam was leaning in a little to look at him, and traced _fucker_ in the condensation.

Adam let out a scoff, biting back the unexpected impulse to grin, and copied Ronan’s move in fogging up the glass to write _asshole._

Ronan paused only long enough for Adam to see a quicksilver flash of teeth before leaning in even closer to the glass to make enough fog to write _conniving bitchass prick._

Adam kept his simple - _shithead_ was a tried and true one - but Ronan's got longer and more intricate as he went on, until Adam wasn't sure if he was being insulted or if he was witnessing a master at work, composing a poem for a contest where you were only allowed to use forbidden words. Adam was grinning outright by now; against all reason he was excited to see what Ronan would come up with next, and he found himself looking between the bow of Ronan's mouth and the sweep on Ronan's eyelashes as Ronan was writing. And just like that, what had seemed like their typical juvenile fun now felt like... something more.

Ronan seemed to notice a shift in Adam's mood, because instead of waiting for Adam to write a response, he rapped his knuckles on the glass and said, “Let me in.”

Adam looked back at him. “We can go for a drive, but I'm driving.”

Ronan let out a derisive sound.

Adam held his gaze. “You wanna do this my way? Or not at all?”

Their stare-down lasted a few heartbeats longer, then Ronan’s lips curled somewhere between a scoff and a laugh, and he walked around to the passenger side.

Adam unlocked the door.

They didn’t get back until nearly 4 in the morning.

 

* * *

 

Ronan was feeling restless. It was possible he was getting a little too used to living here with Adam, and when he thought about that for too long it made him even more restless.

"Show me something you can do," Ronan said, throwing himself onto the couch and poking at Adam's arm.

Adam didn't look up from the book he was reading. "You already know my magic tends to form apparitions. I have an affinity toward plants. That's the first sort of thing I could make when I was younger. Mr. Gray introduced me to a magical contact of his, Persephone, who helped me develop my magic to change appearances. Mr. Gray thought that would be the most useful application. That's how I was able to make Mr. Gray take on your appearance so he could draw Piper out. Which you were so thrilled about."

What a quaint way of putting it. No, Ronan wasn't thrilled Mr. Gray was having Adam give him Ronan's face so he could gather intel and keep the heat headed in the wrong direction. But Declan, liar that he was, thought it was a great plan and Matthew had an unfortunate tendency to listen to whatever Declan told him, so Ronan had been outvoted.

But Ronan wasn't about to be distracted that easily. "Come _on_ , Parrish." He upped the frequency of prodding Adam's arm.

"Knock it off, Lynch," Adam said with exasperation that was becoming long familiar as he finally set his book down. Victory. "What more do you need to know?"

"Who said anything about _need_ to know? You never do magic just cuz you can? Are you actually sitting there voluntarily reading up on magical theory?"

"Magic isn't just there for your entertainment. It opens doors, it says something about your station. Just because you can’t be bothered with any of that doesn't mean I shouldn't keep myself up to date on the latest research."

" _Wow_ , Parrish. What is your damage?"

Adam's face did that disapproving thing that meant he wanted you to know his participation in the conversation was about to be subpar at best. Ronan snatched the book up so Adam couldn't start reading it again and waved it in a disdainful fashion to further illustrate the point. “You gotta know this is bullshit, Parrish.”

“Maybe to you. You’re a Lynch. Everyone knows your magic is something to respect, even if you didn’t want to finish at the Academy. For everyone else, if you haven’t trained at the Academy you’re not worth recognizing as a magician, no matter how much time you spend developing your skills. That’s the way the world works. People are always gonna assume that someone the Academy wanted is more able than someone like me who couldn’t get in the door; just because I can’t change that doesn’t mean I’m gonna let them be right.”

“Parrish,” Ronan said, pressing the book to Adam’s forehead. Then he deliberately tossed the book over his shoulder, hopefully far, he didn’t undermine himself by looking. “I’m not saying you’re wrong. But for fuck’s sake, at least some of the time you gotta worry less about _them_ and get over some of your own bullshit standards you’re imposing on yourself. Magic isn’t just a tool that you use to make something out of yourself that other people are gonna score you on. Magic is you, let yourself go sometime.”

Adam blinked at him, but in a way that seemed considering, and it wasn’t followed by any counter-arguments which was a minor miracle.

Ronan pulled out what looked like a nondescript black chrome Zippo lighter, but when he flicked it open compact beads of light drifted out of it and floated leisurely upwards, like a child’s bubble machine that blew very tiny suns. “See? Try doing magic just because. It might teach you something.”

Adam watched the small dots of light gather on the ceiling with a pensive look on his face, and cupped his hands together. When he opened them again after a few moments of silent concentration, he held a tiny tree in the palm of his hand.

The trunk and branches looked sort of like delicately twisting roots winding up to an umbrella top of green grass.

“Dracaena cinnabari,” Adam said quietly. “I think it’s supposed to be a miniature dragon blood tree.”

“Sounds badass,” Ronan told him. “What’s it do?”

“It gets its name because of its sap.” Adam carefully snapped one of the tiny branches, making red well up, deep deep red.

Ronan took the tiny branch and smirked at the red that stained his fingertips. He reached out and swiped his red fingertips quickly along Adam’s cheek, leaving a satisfying crimson streak behind.

Adam retaliated by skimming his own stained fingers over Ronan’s cheek, but when Ronan tried to get Adam’s other cheek, as was only fair, Adam knocked his hand away.

“Lynch, we’re not going to make a mess getting sap everywhere.”

“We’re not?”

Adam only gave him a face. “Lemme see your lighter.”

With a little experimenting, they got the small spheres of light tucked within the tiny tree’s branches so that when they angled the top of the tree toward them, it shone with soft green light.

Adam made more trees in all different colors and some vines to tie them together, and Ronan dragged out some speakers to get some music going and found a ladder and a staple gun, and soon enough they outlined the walls and ceiling and pool table and the massive bookshelves all in their own bizarre version of fairy lights.

That was a kind of magic in and of itself, the way the glowing lights transformed the whole room. Made everything new and strangely nebulous and extraordinary. Cast new contours over Adam’s elegant features, highlighted the traces of sap still smeared across his cheek, made it that much harder for Ronan to fight back the urge to stare, to reach out.

Adam smiled at him through the glowing lights and the pounding bassline and Ronan was keenly, awfully aware that he was well and truly fucked.

“What now?” Adam asked.

Ronan chewed on the leather bands on his wrist and surveyed the lights along the ceiling, anything not to have to look at Adam. “I dream up some roller blades.”

“Really, Lynch?”

“You’re right, Parrish. We’re not ready for roller blades yet. We gotta think about ramps first. You know, there’s that giant rubber tree downstairs I bet you could really do something with if you put your mind to it.”

Even over the music Ronan could hear the derisive scoff Adam made, but the smile still played faintly at the corner of Adam’s mouth. “Mmm. We’ll see.”

Ronan was so, so fucked.

 

* * *

 

That was the sort of knowledge that didn’t help anything in the knowing of it. That was the sort of knowledge that just kept growing and growing and left you more stranded the bigger it got, like a drowning man who’d fallen through ice and pieces just kept breaking off the more he scrambled for solid ground.

“Fuck,” Ronan said, as soon as he was conscious of being awake, because of course the very deepest and coldest of said metaphorical icy waters came for him in his dreams.

“Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed,” Noah muttered quietly from where he was sitting in the corner of the room, back pressed to the wall and legs drawn up to his chest.

“Fuck!” Ronan said again, with even more vehemence this time. “Noah, what are you doing here?”

Noah shrugged one shoulder. He was nearly as expressive with his shrugging as Ronan was with his cursing. That particular one said, _it's not like I have a lot of other places to be._ “Can I meet Adam?”

Ronan punched out a breath and felt like punching a wall, but Noah was looking dolefully at him, so he only said, “I'm not gonna tell you you can't.”

Noah hadn’t pressed him about the subconscious fuckery that made Ronan want to give up sleeping all together, and Ronan appreciated that. Maybe it was the unorthodox circumstances that connected the two of them, maybe it was just Noah being Noah, but Noah was eerily savvy about subconscious fuckery and Ronan was sure Noah had at least a vague idea of the dream-remnants still pervading Ronan’s psyche.

When he’d first dreamed of Adam, it’d been angry. Not in any substantial way, just an undercurrent that dictated the entire feel of the dream. It’d been abstract sorts of impressions of the sound of Adam’s voice when he got loud, of that tension along Adam’s jaw that would lead any rational person to tread carefully, of Ronan’s own desire to keep pushing, to see how Adam would react next, to get under his skin.

Now his dreams had turned more toward impressions of Adam leaning in close, close enough for their lips to brush, of Adam's hands on him, of a furtive sort of yearning that wouldn't be stomped down and founds ways to light across his skin in unsuspecting moments. The new dreams were a thousand times worse than the old ones.

The last thing Ronan wanted was anyone knowing about it, but if anyone had to, then Ronan figured Noah, quiet and unassuming, was one of the best options out there.

Wordlessly, Ronan led Noah to the main room where Adam was having a cup of tea. Adam looked away from the window to regard them cautiously, questions whirling behind his eyes as he looked between the two of them.

Ronan shrugged to tell Adam it was all right. “Adam, this is Noah. Noah, Adam.” Then he banged around in the cabinets for no real reason because he didn't want anything to do with this.

Adam extended a hand to Noah and they shook, polite as you please, and actually told each other it was nice to meet one another, and Ronan started some toast largely for something to do.

Finally the pleasantries had been sufficiently dealt with, and Adam, still surveying Noah like he'd find all the answers if he just put enough effort in, ventured, “You're…”

“A reaper,” Noah supplied, a little sheepishly. “But I don't…I'm a deserter, I guess you'd call it. I haven't taken a soul in...a long time.”

Adam blinked, taking this in. He offered Noah a nod, to show that he’d like to know more. “What happened?”

“Well,” Noah let out a long sigh, long enough his whole body seemed to deflate a little with it. “The last mission I tried to do… it didn't go well. A human sold his soul for occult knowledge, his time was up, I was supposed to collect. For what it was, it seemed pretty standard. But...he was ready for me. I hadn't done many missions, I wasn't ready to handle the traps he had set up. He got me. He took my blood. He used it to repel all reapers away from him. That sort of magic won't hold forever, but...it'll hold for a good while. The elders… you can imagine they weren't pleased. To put it mildly. The elders aren't known for leniency or forgiveness just in general, even at the best of times, and when a reaper allows the natural order to be disturbed by one overambitious human? They were… well, in a word, they were pissed. I was on real thin ice. Reapers are agents of death. We don't die in the traditional sense. But that doesn't mean we last forever. Our energy...the Elders call it 'redistribution’. I was going to be redistributed if I had even one more minor offense.”

Noah trailed off, and looked at Ronan. Ronan shrugged again, the barest motion, as if he didn't care. He could sense that Noah was keeping a furtive eye on him, although Noah's gaze was ostentatiously on the toaster. He'd stop if Ronan told him to. But Ronan didn't bother. Adam was too clever and too curious not to need more information, and Ronan wasn't going to give him a lie. So he let Noah keep talking.

“Then the next mission I got… I didn't want to do it. It happens, sometimes, that a newer reaper like me has personal issues with certain missions. Usually it's not that big a deal, usually an elder reaper will step in and do the job instead, so that everything keeps moving smoothly. But I'd used up all my chances and if I couldn't do what I had to do...it wasn't worth keeping me around anyway. But I knew I couldn't do it. Didn't matter what they thought or what they were gonna do to me. The mission was to take a boy who was just a kid and struggling with his father's death. I couldn't. So I figured I'd go and help him before I was redistributed. He ended up helping me too, helped me stay here so I wouldn't have to go back. It's been pretty good so far.”

It was easy to see on Adam’s face that Adam was making the connections. The toast popped up. Ronan ignored it. He said, “I’m gonna go see if I can find a baseball bat,” and left.

 

* * *

 

Adam’s dreams were becoming strange things.

If it was true that dreams were meant to help your subconscious mind work through your waking hours, that might go part of the way toward explaining it. His waking hours had certainly gotten stranger.

Some of his earlier dreams were arguments. No one could avoid fighting with Ronan Lynch, living in such close quarters, but Adam had very intentionally resolved not to let Ronan Lynch get under his skin. It hadn't been perfect in execution, but Adam tried. He suspected that the things he'd left unsaid came back around to have their say in his dreams.

Some of his more recent dreams were of being close to Ronan, and they left him feeling lonelier when he woke up.

But the strangest of the dreams were strange because Adam didn't think they were just dreams; Adam suspected some of the dreams he'd been having were made up of memories that weren't his.

He had dreams where he stood by Ronan's side as Mr. Gray came toward them carrying Aurora Lynch's motionless form with a solemn ceremony that spoke of fallen queens in the old poems.

He listened to Mr. Gray explain that Colin Greenmantle was responsible for the death of Niall Lynch, and that Aurora Lynch had been bitten. How one of Mr. Gray's contacts had tried to cure Aurora, and though it had prevented the vampiric disease from spreading, it'd left her utterly unresponsive. In the way of dreams, Adam knew that she would remain in that state long into the future. Beside Adam, Ronan's grief weighed on his shoulders, a bone-deep ache Adam could both see and feel. He wanted to reach a hand out, to do something, but he woke up before he could.

He only felt sure that he truly dreamed memories that weren't his, rather than him dreaming up fanciful imaginings that never really happened to him or anyone else, one night after he'd dreamed of his own memories.

The body of Robert Parrish was often lurking whenever Adam closed his eyes for too long. Sometimes in Adam's nightmares Robert Parrish stood, despite his knife wound and filmy eyes, and stabbed Adam anyway. Sometimes Robert Parrish turned into a wolf and tore at Adam's throat. Sometimes Adam was all alone with only his father's corpse and the horror of what he'd done.

Only he wasn't alone in that night’s dream. Ronan stood beside him, frowning as he looked between the bloodied knife in Adam's hand and the body of a half-turned werewolf that was the last image Adam had of his father.

“A werewolf attacked you when you were younger? That's why you run with Mr. Gray?”

“No,” Adam said. His own voice sounded so far away it might as well have been somebody else's. “Mr. Gray kept tabs on me right after the Veranda was attacked when we were kids. I might have been young, but I was one of the only unknown quantities on the payroll. Mr. Gray wouldn't have felt like he was doing his job if he didn't look into things. I didn't know anything about Colin Greenmantle, but while Mr. Gray was monitoring me..." He didn't know why he continued, but these dreams weren't a place for lies, so he listened to himself say, “I had to leave home because I killed my father. I made him look like a monster because I thought that way people would believe it was more forgivable that I'd done it.”

He'd woken up then, and he laid in the dark for a long while. When enough sunlight started streaming through the windows, he went and he made himself tea.

He had a hard time looking Ronan in the eye.

He was surprised when Ronan broke the silence. “I remember you from when we were kids. You were always coming in with nasty bruises. I was a horrible kid, I was always doing dumb shit and getting myself bruised and scraped up. I thought it was like that. But I remember - your eyes were practically big enough to take up your whole face and they always looked - I remember thinking why didn't he ever loosen up, what was he so scared of. If your father made you feel the way you felt in that nightmare while he was alive then I'm glad he's dead. You shouldn't hold it against yourself. No one who really knew would think it was wrong.”

Adam didn't know how to react. To the fact that Ronan knew about his father; to the fact that Ronan knew about his father from a dream; to the fact that Ronan actively remembered him from so many years ago; to the fact that Ronan didn't care that he'd killed his own father.

Thankfully, when Ronan said what he wanted to say he left the room to give Adam his space.

So now Adam knew that their dreams were somehow connected.

Which meant he knew that the dark empty brick townhouse he dreamed of held some significance for Ronan, because it didn't for him.

“This is where I killed Colin Greenmantle,” Ronan said in a voice that was worse because it had no anger to it, just the same darkness and emptiness as the house around them. “I know he didn't kill my father with his own hands. He was always too much of a spineless coward to do much of anything that he could make his lackeys do for him. But he was the one who bit my mom. Piper Laumonier turned Greenmantle into what he was, a long time ago. He's the original creator of the rest of his kind. He had my mother brought to him because he wanted to turn her himself. Like some kind of sick trophy. So I started with him. For a long time the main thing keeping me going was telling myself I'd get every single bastard who had a hand in what happened to my parents, one by one.”

Ronan breathed in sharply and let the breath out of his mouth. His eyes bore enough pain to suffocate a person.

Then he shoved his clenched fists down in his pockets and shook his head. “You know one of the most important things Noah left out of his story?”

 _Aside from the parts about you_ , Adam didn't say aloud. Instead he looked at Ronan and waited to see how this change of subject connected to the old one.

“The ritual the piece of shit used to screw Noah over, it lasts a while, but not that long. It's already eroded enough that Noah could find the fucker if he really tried. But Noah won't go for it. Part of it is he’s scared. It pissed me the fuck off, how he could be so _passive_ about it. The guy who did it to him, his name is Barrington Whelk. I wanted him dead, not just for what he did to Noah, but because Barrington Whelk sold my parents out. Whelk used to be known as a sort of diplomat between supernatural creatures and humankind. He agreed to set up a meeting with my parents and the Laumoniers. That’s where my parents were going the night my dad died. My parents wanted to talk to the Laumoniers about some shit Greenmantle was stirring up. Greenmantle was making all sorts of moves for power, that’s why he attacked the Veranda when we were kids. My dad knew that Greenmantle was threatened by the Laumoniers. The Laumoniers were pretty upfront about the fact that they couldn’t stand Colin Greenmantle, and real upfront about the fact that they hated him associating with Piper. My dad had intel that Greenmantle was actively gathering research on rituals that would allow a demon to take another demon’s power after taking the other demon’s life. Greenmantle wanted to convince Piper to kill her own family, to get them before they got him. Piper had enough power on her own and used it to help spawn the entire vampiric race; Piper running loose with all three of the Laumoniers’ power? That would mean biblical levels of fucking disaster. It wouldn’t be good for anyone. Which is why my parents thought they could find some common ground with the Laumoniers if they could bring them proof, that’s why they were willing to show up for a meeting. Only Whelk was working for Greenmantle the whole time and instead of getting my parents their meeting he sent them right into Greenmantle’s deathtrap. Greenmantle was first on my list, but Whelk was a close second. I would have let Noah have his chance, though, if he wanted it. Noah deserves it too. But he’d never do it. And it isn’t just cowardice. Part of it is… he just doesn’t think it will do any good. It won’t fix anything, it won’t make him feel any differently about what happened to him. And I always thought it was bullshit. I thought after taking Greenmantle down I’d know my parents were at least part of the way to being avenged. I thought I’d be gunning to drive right from Greenmantle to Whelk to every last name on my list, every last vampire. I thought then I’d know I did everything I could for my parents' memory, I thought that getting the people who crossed them would at least get them some kind of justice. But Greenmantle’s dead now and the fact is - it barely makes a difference. I can’t believe Noah would be right about this, but. Knowing Greenmantle’s dead, it’s better than thinking he’s out there somewhere, but really, it doesn’t change what matters. I’m still living with the same shit. I still - things are never gonna be right. It doesn’t matter what I do.” Ronan shook his head again and made a frustrated noise between his teeth, a sound that was meant to be too loud to hear the sadness underneath.

Ronan went to walk away, and Adam could feel the dream starting to slip away from him, awareness pulling at the edges, but he grabbed hold of Ronan’s wrist to ground himself and he focused. He thought of the forest he’d walked through with Persephone, over and over again until he’d been able to tell which part of the forest was mundane and which part of the forest belonged to the fae, just by the feel of it. When he opened his eyes, the forest surrounded them, soft spring-green leaves and cool earthy shadow, hushed and peaceful. Adam’s instincts usually tended toward the mundane side of things, it was safer that way, but being here with Ronan gave everything a new sort of energy. The birdsong that carried on the breeze, the glimpse of a stag’s antlers from behind a far off tree trunk, the crisp scent of pine and maple, it all made the forest feel less mundane and more like they were walking the borderline between the commonplace and the otherworldly.

They found some mostly flat wide expanses of rock, down by the shore of a quick moving river, that looked like a good place for stretching out on. They lay there for a dreamlike stretch of time, enjoying the low afternoon sunlight, the two of them staying mostly quiet.

When Adam finally woke, he wanted to go back to that place again.

They’d shared so many dreams by now. They’d reached the point where they’d begun to understand how to sway their dreams as they wished. He found himself thinking that perhaps, maybe, conceivably, they could return every night, if they wanted.

 

* * *

 

Ronan and Adam were watching a truly terrible horror flick, having a pretty good time mocking it and exchanging hopes that the characters would die faster, when Ronan’s phone rang with an unknown number. Adam looked at him but didn’t ask before accepting the call and putting it on speaker.

“Hello?” Adam said, because he knew by now that Ronan wouldn’t, even if he still insisted on putting calls on speaker to try to force Ronan to be at least marginally involved, because he was kind of an asshole like that.

“You don’t sound like Ronan Lynch,” said a self-satisfied female voice. “Dean Allen didn’t act a whole lot like him either. I would have handled him, but I had plans and I couldn’t give up the game too early. If you see him, though, would you tell him he wasn’t fooling anybody?”

Ronan and Adam looked at each other tersely.

“This is Piper Laumonier, by the way. I really need to speak to Ronan Lynch, could that be arranged?”

“What do you want?” Ronan asked, going tense from his jaw to his shoulders to his curled fists.

“Ronan!” Piper’s voice said with faux-warmth. “I’m so glad I got a hold of you. I wouldn’t want you to hear this second-hand, that just wouldn’t do, would it.”

“What,” Ronan snarled, “Do you want?”

“Well, I want to know which one of your remaining family members you most want to live.”

There was a beat of nothingness.

Then Piper’s voice continued, “I mean just because I have all three of them doesn’t necessarily mean I should kill all three of them at the same time. That just seems excessive, and I like to think of myself as a reasonable individual, so I’ll spare one and I’ll even let you pick which one you get to keep. At least, for a while. Declan has to know he’s not really in the running, is he. He’s the easiest for you to give up for dead, isn’t he? I feel a little bad about that honestly. I might give him a quicker death, if he doesn’t cause too much fuss. At least Matthew feels _some_ hope. He’s got to be a strong contender, am I right? What a precious little sunbeam. Poor thing doesn’t seem to have any idea why he’s here or how _cruel_ the world can be. I think mostly he’s waiting for his big brothers to come save him. I’d hate for you to let him down. But then if you pick Matthew, you’re sentencing your own mother to death. I mean, she doesn’t do anything. But still, she’s your mother. Are you willing to give up all hope for her? And think about it this way, how would you explain to Matthew that you got his mother killed? Maybe your mother is the better option for you; she won’t be aware enough to miss her dead sons or resent the one she has left. It’s a lot to think about. How about this, I’ll call you back in 24 hours for your decision, and give you the location of the one you choose to live so you can go get them and enjoy the time you have left with them. All right? Ta now.”

The line went dead.

Ronan’s hand was shaking when he went to pick up the phone. He couldn’t stop it. The dread growing in him felt like a living thing that would rip through him from the inside out. He dialed Matthew. It went to voicemail. Before Matthew’s cheery voice was done telling the caller to please leave a message, Ronan had thrown the phone across the room. He was shaking worse now.

Adam, pale but mostly composed, went over to pick the phone up. Ronan must not have broken it, because Adam used it to call Mr. Gray.

Over the course of several phone calls, infinitely more than Ronan could stomach, the situation became more clear. The three abductions had been coordinated to happen around the same time. Aurora would have been the most difficult; she was last seen during one of her rare trips away from the Barns when her aides had taken her to visit a magician who claimed to be able to help her. It was the last time Ronan would trust an outsider who claimed to have a cure. Declan was last seen out with his flavor of the week, but he was so paranoid no girl should have been able to get the drop on him. Matthew had been last seen out on a boat with his friends, but Mr. Gray had looked into all of the usual friends Matthew hung out with. He should have been safe. Mr. Gray had had marks on Piper Laumonier the entire time.

Mr. Gray’s assumption, an easy one to make, was that Piper had turned her single-minded bloodlust specifically on Ronan. She’d certainly given Mr. Gray a run for his money all the times he’d intentionally acted as a decoy for Ronan. She hadn’t made any overt moves to target anyone else Ronan was close to. But that had clearly only ever been what she _wanted_ them to think.

From the intel Mr. Gray had been able to gather, he’d formed a hypothesis that didn’t bode well. Piper wasn’t acting alone. She had convinced the Laumoniers to assist her in her reckless pursuit for revenge, and all three were committed enough to her cause to risk using their demonic influence to brazenly enthrall multiple humans close to the Lynches in order to accomplish the abductions. That was the explanation that fit the facts: each of the human beings the Lynches were last seen with had been under the Laumoniers’ thrall. Mr. Gray hadn’t anticipated that the Laumoniers would have been willing to go so far. They risked war with the very highest, most powerful of the magicians for such an offense, and beyond that, if the larger population found out they risked the fates of every demon in their charge, they risked the entire livelihood of demonkind. Demons were powerful, but they were few and humans were many. The Laumoniers were old enough to remember history’s lessons. One of humanity’s strongest and most primal fears was that their very hearts and minds would be stolen from them by supernatural influence, and in the face of such a threat humankind would use their sheer numbers to band together in wrathful defense of their free will. It’d happened before, to the grisly detriment of many well-known demons.

The Laumoniers ought to have known better than to make such a reckless play. It wasn’t a move the Laumoniers would make lightly.

But they’d made it. And now Ronan didn’t know what would happen.

The waiting was its own form of torture.

Ronan left Adam and Mr. Gray to their strategizing, which sounded little better than talking in circles, and went to the bedroom he used in this useless excuse for a safe house and slammed the door. He lay face down on the bed and made himself dream.

He dreamed of the forest his subconscious mind was always returning to. The trees whipped in the wind under an oppressive gray sky. The air was filled with the threat of a storm. Ronan didn't have time for it.

He closed his eyes and clasped his hands together, and focused only on what he needed. He needed to find a way to Matthew, to Declan, to his mom. He pictured Matthew's brilliant joyous laugh, Declan's storytelling voice from when they were younger, his mom's warm hands gentle on his cheeks and the scent of the perfume she'd always worn. He held on to those memories like a tether to make something that could search them out, something that would mean he could bring them all back to him.

When he woke up, he had three fireflies in his hands. Or something close enough to fireflies. In his dreams, they knew to find the person they were created for like a flower knew to find sunlight.

They were motionless.

Ronan flung them away and punched at the pillow. He kicked at the sheets and the mattress and when that wasn't satisfactory enough he kicked at the bed frame. He wasn't sure how long he was at it for, but when Gansey came in, he was sitting against the wall with his knees pulled in tight against his chest.

Gansey knelt beside him and put a stabilizing hand on his shoulder. “We'll find them.” Gansey said it like it was truth.

“We will,” Gansey repeated, just as firmly, when Ronan failed to respond. “Adam wanted to give you your space but he and Mr. Gray have been working on a plan. We think we've got someone who can help.”

That someone turned out to be Henry Cheng. Ronan knew Henry Cheng as an ally to the Lynches and other supernatural hunters, but Henry mostly dealt with Declan or Mr. Gray, and Ronan preferred it that way. He was sure Henry did too.

Ronan had tended to refer to Henry as Demon Spawn, when he'd had to refer to Henry in the past, because Henry's biological parents had traded their infant son away as their end to a deal with the demon Seondeok. Seondeok had not lived as many centuries as the eldest demons, but in her relatively shorter time she amassed comparable power. She was clever and pragmatic and one of the most formidable foes one could have, which was why it was so advantageous that the Lynches maintained a good relationship with her through her son. Even if Ronan did find Henry obnoxious to the point of putting his fist through a wall most days. Ronan didn't care right now.

Ronan didn't care about the cautionary way Gansey told him to let Henry help, or the embarrassed way Gansey introduced Blue Sargent, civilian consultant for his unit, who'd apparently been working with him on a case when he'd gotten Adam's call, and he thought maybe she could help. All Ronan cared about was how he could get his family back.

Henry, even Ronan had to admit, turned out to be more of an asset than any of them had dared hope. He theorized that the Laumoniers already had powers in place to prevent anyone from tracking their captives, which explained why Ronan’s fireflies had been useless. But Seondeok had wanted to be able to know her potential adversaries movements, so she’d worked with Henry to combine his natural ability to manipulate insects with her own demonic powers. Henry had his own breed of bumblebee that were able to successfully sneak through the Laumoniers defenses and get a lock on their locations. Ronan might not be able to track down his family directly, but Henry already had a way to track the Laumoniers, and the odds were good the Laumoniers were with their captives. Those odds were more than good enough for Ronan to take.

The next stages passed in a blur. Henry would provide them with intel on where to go. Ronan and Adam would go after Matthew, Gansey and Blue would go after Declan, and Mr. Gray would go after Aurora.

Ronan tossed Adam the keys. He had to dream.

In the passenger seat Ronan fell asleep ready to find a way to tear the world apart if he had to. He dreamed of a world in flames. When he woke up, high enough in the sky to pass for a comet, his dream creature soared. Adam’s head was tipped back back back to take it in. When he noticed Ronan looking at him, he only nodded.

Henry’s location had taken them to one of the Laumoniers’ smaller properties the Lynches knew of well enough to know that it wasn’t well-defended. In Henry’s words it was the sort of place the Laumoniers went for a “coastal retreat.” A quick sweep around the property with Adam’s magic helping them avoid notice revealed that the Laumonier brother they were tracking and several of his men were eating oysters out on the expansive back porch.

They took everything that mattered to Ronan and they didn’t even think it warranted the effort of defending themselves. Calling down his monster made of flames was so so easy.

The creature dived, so hot it was white and moving so fast it was the barest blur of wickedly curved beak, enormous wings, and cruel outstretched talons. The wood of the porch burst into flames and Adam gave Ronan a silent tilt of his head to tell him to go inside while Adam kept an eye on the chaos outside. Ronan only encountered three guards stationed around a door at the end of the hall. He had his knives and he had his anger. He didn’t waste any time in going for the throat and he didn’t look back. Beyond the door was the basement and in the basement was Matthew, bound and gagged but not drastically harmed.

“Matthew, it’s me,” Ronan said roughly as he worked at untying Matthew. “Are you all right?”

“Ronan!” Matthew exclaimed, so relieved and trusting Ronan wanted to scream and hack at anyone who dared to come near his younger brother with the knife in his too-tight grip. “I’m okay!”

He took the barest moment to pull Matthew into him and let his cheek press into Matthew’s curls. “We’re getting out of here, Matthew. Stay behind me.”

When they got outside, the large ferns that decorated the back porch had grown into their own wild forest in a matter of moments, so thick and immense it cut off the exit and the view of anyone on the porch. Adam watched his own work with fiercely resolved eyes.

The wounded inhuman shrieks from Ronan’s monster told Ronan that his monster most likely wouldn’t survive the night. A demon as powerful as one of the Laumoniers wouldn’t be thwarted by such a thing for any length of time. But still, the other screams that mingled with the monster’s cries told Ronan that his creation would be taking down its fair share with it. The men in the Laumoniers’ employ were nowhere near so powerful.

Ronan cupped a hand gently to the back of Matthew’s neck and guided him into the car. Then Ronan got into the driver’s seat and kept his foot on the accelerator. He would have done far far worse to keep Matthew safe.

As they were driving, Adam picked up a call from Gansey’s number. It was Declan on the line, and Ronan had never been so grateful to hear his voice. “Is Matthew okay?”

“I’m fine, Declan! Are you okay?” Matthew asked, both bright and concerned from the backseat.

“I’m fine. I’ll see you both soon at the safe house.” It was short and to the point; it was all they needed.

When they all got to the safe house, Matthew ran to Declan and threw his arms around him. Then, after a hair's breadth of a pause where neither were sure if they would, Ronan and Declan hugged. Matthew got his arms around the both of them, and the three of them stayed like that for a very long time.

Then they sat together in exhausted silence, because as impossibly relieved as they were to be together, there hadn’t been any word from Mr. Gray.

They didn’t move until they saw headlights shining through the windows, and they all stood as Mr. Gray came in with Aurora in his arms.

“Is she-?” Declan started to ask.

“She wasn’t harmed,” Mr. Gray said heavily as he set her in the closest leather armchair.

The Lynch brothers went to her. Matthew gave her an exuberant kiss on the cheek. Ronan knelt beside her and put a hand carefully over hers as Declan carefully pushed some of her hair back from her face, both silently assessing her for damage, but she was as still and peaceful as ever.

“Laumonier wouldn’t give her up,” Mr. Gray said, his words all the more grave for how simplistic he made them sound. “I shot him.”

 

* * *

 

“I had to tell her about Colin, I'm not telling her about this,” Whelk had said to one of the goons who'd come to him in a panic about the death of one of the Laumoniers. He'd stood by what he said too.

It hadn't mattered, ultimately. Piper had still demanded his presence at her dead father's side. Ever since the asshole middle child Lynch had managed to get the drop on Colin Greenmantle, Whelk's life seemed to be nothing but Piper’s demands. How much useless effort had he spent, helping her chase down Dean Allen to hell and back when they knew perfectly well he wasn't truly their target, for no reason other than to satisfy Piper’s theatrical desire for revenge. Whelk would never understand why Piper was so hellbent on wasting everybody’s time. Why she wouldn't just kill Ronan Lynch and toss the body in a convenient river or off a convenient cliff was beyond him. But he would never tell Piper that. Some days Whelk thought Colin was the one who was better off.

Only not really. Whelk had taken great pains to keep himself alive. That had been back in the halcyon days when his life had seemed to have so much promise. It'd seemed especially promising when Piper Laumonier and Colin Greenmantle were guaranteeing him the fast track to power and prestige. Guarantees they still hadn't made good on. He’d done tasks for them, distasteful things no one else was meant to know about, and in exchange they were supposed to give him more supernatural prowess than mortal man could imagine. Yet here he was, with no more power and unimaginably worse off. He’d been marginally respected, as a go-between for magicians and supernatural creatures. He’d lost all that when word got out that he set up the Lynches. But he'd gone too far down shit's creek to reverse course. The ritual he'd done to repel reapers had weakened over time to the point of being about as much protection as a layer of cellophane. If Piper didn't provide soon, he was screwed.

So he went when Piper called.

“What do you see?” Piper asked him.

 _A dead son of a bitch,_ Whelk did not say.

“An unfortunate loss,” Whelk ventured to sound sympathetic.

“Don't strain yourself,” Piper said, eyes dangerously remote in a way that Whelk didn't trust at all. “I have no use for condolences, tell me what you take away from this.”

“The Lynch family is no small threat, if they’ve got a man on their payroll who can take down one of the most powerful, ancient demons to walk the earth. The odds of Gray getting his hands on a properly sanctified bullet to do the job, let alone the odds of him being able to make the kill shot? That's quite a feat he pulled off. We're gonna have to stomp them down.”

“You're a terrible little man,” Piper told him with glacial calm. “But you aren't wrong. Do you know why I keep you on my payroll? It's because you're good at understanding what has to be done and seeing it through. Do you know what the worst part of this is?” Piper was staring unnervingly at the corpse on the floor. “Dean Allen is a mere mortal. He had no right to take the life of a greater demon. He can't use a demon's power and so where did all of my father's power go? Nowhere. There's no salvaging that. But we are going to ensure we don't suffer this same loss again so that there will be no stopping us when we _stomp_ the Lynches and any other threat down. Do you know how we're going to accomplish this?”

Whelk was fucking tired of Piper and her questions. “I'm going to do whatever you tell me to do.”

“What a good answer.” Piper's cold satisfaction filled him with dread. “You're going to start by finding me the very most sanctified oil any holy man has to offer.”

Whelk stared.

Piper still hadn't torn her gaze from the body of her father. “Do you understand what this is, Barrington? This is failure. You're going to do whatever it takes to turn this failure around.”

“I understand.” Whelk said.

Of course he did.

It was the story of his life.

 

* * *

 

Piper wouldn’t stand for this.

That’s the thought she had clung to as she’d stared motionlessly at her father’s body, which had looked nearly peaceful except for the hole in the forehead and the eyes, open and dull and utterly void.

She wouldn’t stand for this.

It was past time for her to take more direct action. She remembered how around the body her men had just talked. Theorized futilely on how it happened, attempted ineffectually to organize their next steps. Useless. She should have known all along: the only way to get this done was to do it herself.

The way Piper saw it was this: love wasn't worth holding yourself back. She loved her father, and what had that amounted to? He was gone, and the salt in the wound was the knowledge that all his power was gone, out of reach, wasted.

Piper wasn't going to be made a fool of twice. She wasn't going to be hindered by anyone, least of all the most obnoxious of Niall Lynch's little brats. She was going to see through what she set out to see done, and if her uncles were too weak to manage to assist her then she would find ways around that.

It wasn't that Piper didn't feel remorse when she met with her uncles to discuss tactics, and they both drank the wine she'd laced with sanctified oil. It wasn't that she didn't feel grief when she opened their throats with a blessed dagger while they were sluggish. But when their powers became hers, she knew that she could do what the three brothers had so disastrously failed to do. And that, in the end, was worth it.

 

* * *

 

“I come bearing news. I’m going to try to remain hopeful that with a little strategizing and a little dumb luck we can make some good news out of it,” Henry proclaimed with his usual grandeur as he entered the safe house. It hardly constituted safe anymore, but it was a convenient enough meeting place for all of them, Ronan supposed.

Ronan was just about done with _news_ , especially news that was presented with such a precarious opening, but his family was safe and that was far more than he’d dared hope not so very long ago. “Cheng -” Fuck, Ronan should just buy Henry a small vacation island and call it a day. Henry would probably have himself a grand old time and it’d be easier than trying to force the words out. But no. However else he attempted to repay Henry in the future, words were still necessary. He managed, “Thanks.”

Henry tipped his head a little to the side, looking like some sort of winsome protagonist in a movie listening for his little animal friends to come answer his call, clearly waiting to see if any more words were forthcoming. Eventually he took pity on Ronan and waved a hand benevolently. “I’ll just go ahead and assume you’re RSVP'd to my next big shindig. I’m picturing a 70’s theme...”

He enjoyed the look on Ronan’s face for a full half a minute before clearing his throat and saying, “But I digress. There are things you all need to know. My sources inform me that the remaining two Laumonier brothers are dead by Piper’s own hand.”

There was silence as they all took this in.

Henry let out a heavy breath. “Piper Laumonier doesn’t take loss well. She’s somewhat unhinged, I believe. She’d killed her uncles in order to take their power for herself, which is rather inadvisable on her part and very dangerous for our part. One of the earliest demons taking on all the power of the only two demons to proceed her? The power she can exert over all supernatural beings beneath her is almost total. From what we can gather, she plans to start by using her control to have her supernatural minions obliterate everyone in this room. Then I’m sure she intends to crush every magician and human who won’t show deference to her and her army.”

“Where does your mother stand on this?” Adam asked quietly.

Henry slid his hands in his pockets and seesawed his head faintly from side to side. “She’s made her way for herself by not putting anything in the pot if she’s not sure of a favorable outcome at the end of the game. She doesn’t want Piper to take power, but she isn’t going to risk her own position without some surety that Piper can successfully be overpowered. Taking another demon’s power doesn’t come without consequences. The power is very unstable in the beginning, and once it settles to truly become a part of the demon’s own power, it begins to warp the demon’s magic very slowly over time, like a cancer. Demons in the past who have taken another demon’s power have become compromised, mentally and physically, and I’m sure we’re all agreed that Piper Laumonier already has her fair share of issues. Currently my mother is taking steps to make sure she has the proper instruments and invocations to be able to disperse with Piper’s powers after Piper’s death. But my mother is patient; if we don’t come up with a plan of action that convinces her we’re a match for the threat Piper presents, she’ll wait the centuries that it takes for Piper’s own powers to weaken herself, and act then, when she finds the odds more to her liking. That will, of course, be much too late for our purposes and for much of humankind. It also still leaves the somewhat harrowing question of what will become of the supernatural fractions who will have no clear leader, since my mother will only concern herself with keeping demonkind under any sort of rule or direction. For many reasons, this outcome represents something of a catastrophe.”

Mr. Gray took this information in stride. He folded his arms across his chest and said simply, “We focus on what we can do to stop Piper. What do we know?”

“Well, since we’re not planning on waiting centuries, the best time to make our move is now, while her powers are still unstable,” Henry said, striving to sound optimistic. “That’s sort of fortuitous for us anyway, because Piper has no intentions of waiting around. From what my sources have been able to find out and from what we know of Piper in general, our first concern should be for Ronan and for our friendly neighborhood hit-man. Mr. Gray, you shot her father, so I would estimate that she intends to torture you for a little bit before, oh, tearing your heart from your ribcage and eating it raw. Ronan, she holds you personally responsible for all of the events that have unfolded, so I’m fairly confident she wants to save for last to ensure that by the time she’s done with you you’ll have thoroughly wished that you could have been in Mr. Gray’s position instead. Now assuming my assessment of the situation is correct, which I think is safe, she’ll want to get Mr. Gray out of the way early and she’ll want to do it herself. She’ll want to save Ronan as a sort of grand finale, and she’ll also want to do that herself, but since she can’t be everywhere at once she’ll have to allot help to keep Ronan contained until she’s ready to properly deal with him. Obviously, she no longer has any of the Laumoniers to call on and she no longer has Colin Greenmantle to call on, so I think that the most likely candidate she’ll call on to do her bidding is -”

“Barrington Whelk,” Noah said, appearing somewhere behind and a little to the left of Ronan.

Ronan turned to look at him, and Noah looked back at him with sunken, wary eyes. “I think you’re right. I think it’s time I did something about him.”

“Good,” Henry offered, in an off-handed sort of tone that wasn’t enough to cover for the disquiet visible in his eyes. “So that just leaves Piper and her supernatural horde to deal with. How tough can they be to out-think, with all of us here?”

They all looked at one another.

It was going to be a long night.

 

* * *

 

The question of what they were going to do now that Piper's newest and even more extreme plan was in action wasn't an easy one. Adam was all too aware that they didn't have very long at all to come up with an answer.

Piper was willing to kill her own family for power, and the thought of what she was willing to do in the pursuit of adding to her own demonic influence over the supernatural creatures beneath her made the prospect of her future intentions a terrifying one. She had to be stopped, but how?

Adam was also aware that it fell to him to come up with solutions the others might not want to risk. If Adam had learned anything in his life it was that you couldn't achieve what you wanted without making some sacrifices.

So late at night when Ronan and Mr. Gray were preoccupied discussing extra protection for Aurora and Matthew, Adam went to the forest.

How many times had he heard it from how many of the women of Fox Way: even the most ancient and most powerful supernatural creatures knew better than to cross the Queen of the Fae.

That was their best bet, so Adam set cherries and champagne on an enormous tree stump as an offering, because he remembered Persephone mentioning a long time ago that the Fae Queen was partial to them.

He didn't have to wait long for a form to appear from one of the trees. Not from behind the tree. From the tree. Adam lowered his eyes because thinking about the image too long was somehow deeply uncomfortable, and he lowered his head because he figured he ought to show respect.

He only looked up again when the Fae Queen's sing-song voice said, “To what do I owe these fine gifts, Adam Parrish?”

The glowing form before him was tall, too tall for a human, and willowy. Her skin gave off an eerie luminescence, like she was her own distant star. Her long dark hair was run through with flowers, and not just the delicate bits, but dirt and thorns and tangles of roots too. Her eyes were ancient and carried a hectic energy that warned at a glance that she'd gone past _knowing_ to become _chaotic_.

“I have a favor to ask,” Adam said quietly.

The Fae Queen held the narrow champagne flute up and regarded him through the bubbling liquid with a wicked curl to the corner of her mouth. “Oh, I'm sure you have many, Adam Parrish.”

Adam didn't respond, waiting to see what else she might offer.

She twisted the champagne flute this way and that by its delicate stem for a long while before tilting her head at him. Adam didn't look away, and he never saw her take a sip from the glass, but somehow nearly half the glass had been drained.

“Most folk judge patricide awfully harshly,” She said conversationally, and waited, to see how deep the barb would land.

Adam was focused on what he wanted to accomplish here, and so he didn't really feel the sting, although somewhere in the back of his mind was the awareness that it would probably fester.

“I, however, am a big believer in reaping what one sows.” She angled her glass toward him as if in a toast. “You're going to have to sow for yourself, Adam Parrish.”

Of course he did. Adam had the dark suspicion things would go differently if Gansey were the one asking, but he swallowed that bitterness down as best he could. “Gwenllian,” Adam said, because Persephone had told him that this was the most recent name the Fae Queen had taken a liking to, and it might offer him some small advantage here. “What can I do to make it worth your while for you to help us?”

“What can you do, Adam Parrish.” Her words were sharper for how simple they were. “I don't like you. I like Persephone, though, and she likes you, so that's enough for me to tell you that whatever you need to do to protect your little friends, you can go forth with my blessings. That doesn't mean you can expect me to help you.” She handed him back the empty champagne flute and the empty cherry bowl. “For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.”

Adam understood a dismissal when he heard one.

He also understood an opening when he heard one; he had some thinking to do.

 

* * *

 

“I know it isn't ideal,” Adam said quietly. “But this can work.”

Ronan let out a derisive sound between his teeth, but he looked more generally displeased than like he was going to raise an objection.

“It's the best chance we have, Ronan,” Adam said, softly but firmly, because it was the truth and he wouldn't let them squander it just because it might be a little discomfiting.

“I know,” Ronan snapped, “It doesn't mean I have to like it.”

Adam looked away. This illusionary element of his magic was the part of his magic he liked the least. It had its uses, but ultimately, it was fake. Lies. Of course Ronan wouldn't want anything to do with it. Adam couldn't blame Ronan for that. He especially couldn't blame Ronan for resenting being the object of Adam's illusion.

Adam was surprised to feel very careful fingers on his jaw, turning his face just a little so that Adam would look at Ronan.

“You’re not going to be you,” Ronan said, and there was the usual anger in his voice but his eyes were more guarded than anything else. “And they're going to try to hurt you because they want to hurt me.”

“It won't come to that,” Adam said, looking between Ronan's sharp eyes and long lashes and the defiant curl of Ronan’s mouth, trying to take some of that boldness for himself. “We'll kick all their asses.”

Ronan grinned at that, something ferocious but also something private in it, just between the two of them. There was something charged in that moment, a kind of electricity they’d felt more and more often, but had gone ignored.

Logically, Adam knew it wasn't the time. They had enough going on, they didn't need this sort of complication.

Logic wasn't enough to motivate him to pull away.

Before he could gather himself, try to get his priorities back in order, Ronan kissed him.

Ronan kissed him like he’d only had one moment left before he had to walk off to war, and then he pulled back, searching Adam’s face. It made Adam want to press against him, to close his eyes and run on instincts he never let lead him before. Something on his face must have been enough, because Ronan leaned in to him and closed that connection again.

There were lots of theoretical reasons why this might not be such a good idea, but Ronan's mouth and the slip of his tongue and the palms of his hands hot on Adam’s hips were real and a thousand times more worthwhile.

It was easy to get lost in, trying to pull back for air and watching the way Ronan’s silk black eyelashes slipped halfway closed when Adam touched the sharpness of his jaw. Tilting his head up to find Ronan's parted mouth again.

Eventually though, they both drew in deep breaths and knew that they had to focus on what was to come.

Ronan’s fingers brushed down Adam’s arm and slid between Adam’s own. His eyes were fierce and so alive. “They’re not going to know what hit them.”

Adam grinned, because in that moment there was no doubt that they could make those words the truth.

 

* * *

 

Whelk had experienced too much to trust anything that came too easily. He’d never trusted Piper’s psychotic plan to murder her remaining family to obtain absolute power over the supernatural realm. The world didn’t truly give anyone _absolute_ power, and what power it did give it gave at a very steep cost. He’d heard stories, maybe nothing more than just cautionary tales, that any power one demon absorbed from another was tainted. Corrupted. He thought this had to have at least some truth to it. There had to be some reason demons didn’t just tear one another apart to make themselves stronger, right? But Piper would never listen to anything so reasonable, and Whelk wasn’t dumb enough to try to get in her way.

No, Whelk did everything Piper asked of him. And he was rewarded by essentially being put on babysitting duty.

Ronan Lynch was being far too quiet. Maybe he’d tired himself out running for his life through the fucking woods. Whelk had sure as hell gotten tired of it pretty quick. Maybe Ronan was laboring under the misapprehension that if he kept his head down Piper would go slightly easier on the people he cared about. But Whelk didn’t really believe that. Ronan had interacted enough with Piper Laumonier, enough to know that the odds of her showing mercy weren’t just slim, they were beyond the bounds of any feasible possibility. So what was he up to?

Without warning, Ronan lunged forward from behind the tree he’d been doing a terrible fucking job of trying to use for cover, and between one moment and the next Whelk’s vision went white in an explosion of pain.

The little fucking bastard had _head-butted_ him.

“You broke my fucking nose!” Whelk shouted, voice thick through the blood rushing down from his nose to his chin to stain his shirt.

Ronan shoved the sleeve of his own shirt up and pressed his exposed forearm purposefully to Whelk’s bloody shirt, just slightly left of Whelk’s breastbone. Whelk shoved him back with a curse because what the fuck was the psycho thinking, when he noticed black ink written on Ronan’s skin under the smear of red on Ronan’s arm. Like a very unsubtle child attempting to cheat on a test. What was he up to?

But some subconscious part of Whelk must have known what this meant, because his body was stumbling backwards even as his mind was slow to piece together the truth of what was happening. When he’d first researched reapers, one of the earliest things he had learned was that one could summon a reaper if one had the reaper’s true name written in the reaper’s own hand, and fresh blood was spilled over the written name.

In a sort of horrifying trick of the light, in the space of a blink, Noah was before him.

When Whelk pictured Noah, he always thought of Noah as meek and shadowy.

There was nothing meek or vague about Noah now, especially not Noah’s eyes, which glowed with a volatile, kinetic sort of power as his gaze settled on Whelk’s, like a searchlight cutting through an endless cavern.

“Remember me, Barrington?”

Whelk didn’t realize that he shouldn’t have been looking at Noah’s eyes, but at the glinting arc that Noah’s scythe cut through the air, until too late.

 

* * *

 

Piper was having trouble accepting how things had started so well and seemed to be deteriorating like one of those awful movies where a group of 300 men think they can actually stand up against an army of 300,000.

She couldn't be sure when or where exactly the tide had started to turn. Ronan Lynch and his pathetically inadequate band of friends seemed to have no better plan than to flee and try to hide in the woods. Whelk had gotten Ronan out of the way; she had specifically told Whelk she wanted to save Ronan for last. Gray hadn't given up his charade of impersonating Ronan, but he wasn't enough to turn the tides single-handedly. Piper had droves of demons and werewolves and vampires and all sorts of lesser beings at her command.

But then the obnoxious sheltered rich police officer slash undercover lycanthrope managed to somehow break her sway over the werewolves. It shouldn’t have been possible.

And then the real Ronan Lynch appeared in the fray and went to back up Gray, because evidently even they realized their farce fooled no one, and evidently Barrington Whelk couldn’t manage to maintain even the faintest shred of usefulness.

And then all throughout her swarm of supernatural beings, even among her demons, her forces stopped their attacks, halting in place, some even dropping to their knees. Piper looked around for the source of what was responsible for this, and -

This couldn't be happening.

It couldn't.

It was bad enough that the intolerable werecub apparently unlocked his alpha potential and now had all the werewolves keeping the vampires busy.

But the glowing figure that was approaching couldn't be who Piper thought she was.

She was tall, too tall for a human, and willowy. Her skin gave off an eerie luminescence, like she was her own distant star. Her long dark hair was run through with flowers, and not just the delicate bits, but dirt and thorns and tangles of roots too. Her eyes were ancient and carried a hectic energy that warned at a glance that she'd gone past _knowing_ to become _chaotic_.

She moved relentlessly forward with her arms spread wide, calling in a gleeful sing-song voice, “Flee, flee, flee while you can, go home now if you ever want to go home again.”

It was impossible that a repugnant little bastard like Ronan Lynch had garnered the support of the Queen of the Fae. How could she be here?

It hardly mattered. What mattered was that all the lowly creatures Piper had sacrificed so much to gain command over were breaking rank. The supernatural authority she held over them couldn't be bested by much, but the self-preservation awakened by the idea that they may be mere seconds away from being transfigured into a blade of grass and crushed under the Fae Queen's foot, or simply dissolved away into so much stardust, was enough to bring them back to themselves.

Piper let out a scream of outrage.

Behind her, a familiar voice said, “Piper, enough.”

But, no.

No.

It couldn't be.

“I saw your body,” Piper told her father tonelessly.

But once she'd had a moment to think past the harrowing lurch of her heart, she realized it truly couldn't be. The man she had whirled around to face looked painfully close to but was not an exact match for her father. Nor either of her father's brothers. She'd lived her long life noting every last minute detail of the three; she would not be fooled.

But that tiny moment of weakness was enough.

The impostor that wore her father's face leveled a gun at her, and she snapped her fingers to snap his arm before he could fire. Whatever tricks that managed to make him look like such a convincing copy, it didn't protect him from her. The gun hit the ground with a clatter and the man dropped to his knees quickly after, clutching his broken arm.

The gun was on the ground. It hadn't gone off. The gun was on the ground, Piper focused on the small black shape of it, as pain spread out from a sharp ice-pick jab that bothered her like an agonizing itch somewhere just below her shoulder blade. The chill and the ache were spreading with every small involuntary shudder. Why was it so cold? The gun hadn't gone off. So why…?

The darkness closed in.

 

* * *

 

Ronan watched Piper drop to the floor. There was a cold sort of relief in seeing Seondeok’s very faint serene sort of smile and knowing it was done.

Seondeok pulled the crystal dagger she'd used from Piper's back, cleaned it on Piper's shirt, and tucked it away with understated poise. “Friends,” Seondeok addressed the watching demons in a clear voice. “I think we've all had enough of this. Let us go and prepare ourselves for a new day.”

With that, the demons quietly dispersed. Seondeok had earned the right to lead them. She spared only a moment to glance at the form that still passed for Laumonier. “We'll discuss matters after your arm has been tended to.” Then she left too, to establish order among her new ranks.

Only then did Ronan's own mirror image let his illusions fall, becoming Adam again.

Laumonier faded into Mr. Gray.

The willowy form of the Fey Queen who had gone to help the wolves waned back into Blue's form.

Adam was dangerously pale and shuddering with over-exhaustion.

“Adam?” Ronan asked, gripping Adam's arm.

Adam's blue eyes focused on him, and they were tired but victorious. “Yeah?”

Ronan let out a breath, feeling himself drift a little closer to Adam without trying to as the tension released from him. “Jesus, don’t do that to me. You all right? That was fucking amazing, magician.”

Adam reached out very carefully, hand going to Ronan’s cheek and his thumb very lightly brushing back and forth along the edge of Ronan's cheekbone. He smiled. “We did it.” And he kissed Ronan.

It was quick, a warm press of closed mouth to closed mouth. Just to prove that they were both there, and they were all right. It still made Ronan’s heart restart in his chest, caused a heady, adreno-junkie ratcheting of his pulse.

Ronan smiled fiercely into the kiss, pulling Adam closer. “We did it.”

 

* * *

 

Adam was tired enough to doze through almost the entirety of the ride back to the safe house.

They'd be leaving it soon enough, but for now, Adam wanted to sleep. He wanted to sleep, and he didn't want to be alone, so he walked to Ronan's room. He was probably being ridiculously obvious, but after everything, he found he was past caring. Ronan followed a few steps behind him and he could feel Ronan watching him, cautious in uncharted territory.

Adam went to the bed and climbed in, pulling the covers down next to him markedly enough to invite Ronan too, waiting to see if Ronan would say anything.

He didn't. He slid in beside Adam, warm and solid. Adam's eyes were already closed, but he felt Ronan's arms ease around his waist and pull him a little bit closer, and Adam couldn't remember ever feeling so content. He fell asleep to the sound of Ronan's steady breathing.

When they woke up hours later they were both starving and they resolved to finish off whatever food was left in the house.

They scrounged up the two largest bowls and split what was left of the Ben and Jerry's Fossil Fuel ice cream from the freezer. Then they added all the rest of the snacks that they'd gathered: popcorn and trail mix and pizza flavored pretzels and sour gummy worms. The only things Adam didn't let Ronan throw directly in the bowl was the beef jerky and the lunch meats. Those Adam picked at before he started on his ice cream. Ronan went from one to the other without the slightest show of concern.

After the ice cream, which was surprisingly satisfying, they took turns showering, and then they began to pack up in earnest.

As they had eaten, Ronan had talked about Adam visiting the Barns sometime, and that was the thought that Adam was preoccupied with as he put his things into his bags to take back to the small apartment Mr. Gray had set him up with a few years back. He'd wanted so badly to get back to it in the beginning of all this, to his own space, but now he seemed to have forgotten most of the appeal of his empty apartment. He wanted to see the Barns, he wanted to try to help Ronan's mother, he didn't want to give up the days and nights he'd gotten to spend with Ronan.

Still, as unexpectedly happy as his time with Ronan made him, he wanted to keep a level head. He didn't want to charge forward, he believed in being sensible, in taking the time and space to make sure this could work for the both of them. He knew what he wanted and he wouldn’t chance making missteps because he rushed on the way to getting it. Adam Parrish lived a life of looking to the future, and his future seemed brighter than he'd ever foreseen for himself before.

Ronan came in to lean against the door frame. Adam went up to him, unable to bite back the urge to smile a little.

"I want you to have this." There was something untempered about Ronan's sharp features now that Adam usually only got to witness when they were with Matthew. Adam took the proffered papers Ronan was holding.

They were perfect replicas of Academy transcripts and an Academy diploma with Adam's name on them.

"You can use them however you want. You can just use them as firestarter, it's up to you. I just want you to have the option. You're better than all the asshats at the Academy put together, you shouldn't have to let any of their gate-keeping fucking bullshit slow you down."

Not so long ago, Adam wouldn't have wanted anything to do with this. It was clear from the way Ronan watched him that Ronan wasn't really expecting Adam to go for it. But if Adam had learned anything it was that he was tired of trying to do everything himself.

He tucked the papers away carefully with his things and gave a shrug of his shoulder. "Happy graduation to me."

Ronan's mouth crooked sharply at the corner. "There we go, Parrish."

Adam pulled Ronan in, and Ronan was leaning forward to meet him, quiet hitching of breath and lips grazing lips.

Ronan’s hands left a trail of fire on Adam’s skin, sliding under Adam’s shirt to splay over Adam’s hips, and up to trace Adam’s ribs. Stroking searing fingers over his cheek, over the fine line of his eyebrow, over his jaw. The heat, swooping and spiking like something alive, was more than skin deep, awakening Adam's nerves and his heart and his lungs as he took in stuttering snatches of air between open-mouthed kisses to the corner of Ronan’s mouth and down the length of Ronan’s throat.

Ronan's breathing was roughened too, like he'd been fighting or drag racing, and Adam was fascinated by it, by the effect he had on another person, on _Ronan_ , who’d always been intense but never more so than right now, as he backed Adam up against the wall and caught Adam’s lower lip between his teeth, sharp and unrelenting and perfect.

Ronan was so solid against him and so _close_ Adam couldn’t help the way his hips kept shifting just that little bit, and in between soft bites and licks to the curve of Ronan’s neck he heard himself say, “Bed’s that way.”

Ronan pulled back, and for a cold airless moment Adam thought that maybe Ronan wasn’t _really_ interested. He struggled to compose himself, to think rationally, to remember that he _knew_ Ronan well enough to know that Ronan wouldn’t be here at all if Ronan didn’t want this, that it made sense to go slow, that it didn’t mean anything about Adam.

Then Ronan swept his eyes down over Adam’s body in a way that made Adam shiver, and he reached for Adam’s shirt, and Adam reached for Ronan’s belt, and everything felt like it was slotting into place.

And Adam didn’t have to think anymore. He just let himself feel.

 

* * *

 

Gansey's glorious orange Camaro was already in the Nino's parking lot when Ronan and Adam pulled in.

Ronan's good mood couldn't even be dampened by the fact that Henry was standing just inside the restaurant alongside Gansey, Noah and Blue.

"Look who finally deigned to grace us with their presence," Henry greeted them ostentatiously, his eyebrows arching up to his enormous hair.

Ronan flipped him off.

"We were just discussing the ethical ramifications of leaving Mr. Gray in the care of my mom until his arm is better, and then leaving him as king of the majority of all supernatural beings," Blue interceded easily.

"Little late, isn't it," Ronan muttered.

"You're worried about Mr. Gray and your mother?" Adam asked, trying to select the easier problem to tackle.

"No, not worried. It's just weird. They're a _thing_."

"A _thing_?" Noah echoed.

"Trust me, if you saw them you'd understand. They're definitely a _thing_. I'll get a picture for you guys sometime. It's a little obnoxious, how much of a thing they are. In like two days. I kept thinking mom was going to realize _no I probably_ shouldn't _get involved with Persephone's super sketchy mafia-style hit-man contact_ , but no. Don't get me wrong, Mr. Gray is a good guy, I know that; just not necessarily the type of person you imagine your mother dating? I think I've arrived at acceptance though. Kinda."

"Mr. Gray is gonna marry your mom and become your step-dad and he's gonna groom you to be the short princess of the majority of all supernatural creatures to carry on his legacy." Ronan nodded along as he spoke, to really hammer it home.

"There are a lot of knives in here, Lynch."

"They're dull as shit."

"I have a lot of determination."

"Yeah you sound real _accepting_ down there, maggot."

"Gansey," Blue said, not breaking gazes with Ronan. "After we eat, you're going to drive me somewhere I can get a switchblade."

"I think our server is heading this way," Gansey said, valiantly peering deeper into the restaurant.

"They're illegal and he's a cop," Adam pointed out though he didn't sound especially concerned.

"Just ask your soon-to-be step-dad for one, he'll hook you up." Ronan smirked.

"Why would you give her suggestions," Noah whispered, but so that they could all hear.

"Don't worry, lovely lady, however you come by your weapon of choice you can rest assured in the knowledge that when you use it Gansey could never bear to turn you in and I for one will absolutely be willing to provide an alibi," Henry said encouragingly.

"Table of six, please," Gansey told the approaching waitress with his best for-the-press smile.

The waitress showed them to their table without comment.

The six of them seated themselves around the booth - Gansey and Blue trying to be subtle about brushing hands and being really _not_ subtle; Henry entertaining himself making ludicrous guesses as to what Noah ate anyway; Ronan sitting maybe a little too close to Adam but Adam smiled at him, quiet and genuine, so the rest of the world could fucking fight him - and it had the feeling of tradition forming.

“We should make this a thing,” Gansey announced, because he had to make it official, and the rest of them rolled their eyes at him with varying degrees of how much affection they were willing to display with their eye roll, because only Gansey could get away with being so _Gansey_.

None of them disagreed.


End file.
